hot spot
by Speedy1236
Summary: Dr. Eggman is back and plans to conquer Mobius by abusing the mysterious heritage of a long forgotten ancient people. Tails gets captured, Knuckles is hurt and Sonic needs to act fast to prevent the worst... -OLD-
1. Chapter 1: Shot echidna

_The Servers are the seven Chaos.__  
Chaos is the Power. Power is enriched by the heart.  
The Controller serves to unify the Chaos._

ancient echidna chant

* * *

**Shot Echidna**

It was a wonderful summer day on Mobius. The sun was shining down on the mountains and it was nearly windless.

But from one second to the next a sharp blow of wind rustled through the green grass and a flash of blue raced down the mountain side.

Sonic the Hedgehog sped down into a canyon; his feet touching the rocky ground hundred times per second. He followed the canyon's sharp turns without even thinking of slowing down. When suddenly a vertical wall appeared only meters in front of him, Sonic accelerated even more and ran up the wall.

The blue hedgehog found himself on a large rocky plateau and raced across the plain terrain, improvising a slalom run, his arms stretched out like wings of a plane and steadying Sonic's fast movements.

He stopped when he reached the other side of the plateau and looked down into a deep canyon, so deep that the hedgehog could barely see the ground. Sonic took a stone, stepped forward until he stood with his toes on the edge and let the stone fall down. He watched as it got smaller and smaller and after a few moments was out of his sight. Seconds later Sonic's sharp ears caught the hardly audible sound of the impact.

"Cool!", he grinned and looked down into the depth a few more moments. Then he eyed around and his grin broadened when he spotted the small suspension bridge a few meters on his left. Sonic strolled over and regarded the old bridge with playful nonchalance. Simple ropes holding pieces of wood together, it seemed as if it was nearly falling apart just when someone looked at it.

Using it to cross the groundless canyon would be dangerous – and Sonic loved danger. While he stepped backwards on the plateau to get a few meters for a run-up, he noticed a satisfactory wave of adrenaline flooding his body.

Sonic grinned and accelerated. "Yahooooooo!", he yelled in excitement as he raced over the bridge, looking down on the wooden steps and in the depths between them. Sonic reached the other side in less than two seconds, turned around and saw, running backwards, how the bridge scatted into pieces and its parts fell down into the canyon. "Wow, that was great!" Sonic turned around again and continued running.

He had been out here in the mountains for days. It was his idea of a perfect vacation. Loads of exiting routes to run on, enough place to discover some kinds of adventures. Adventures were what Sonic lived for. He had a body full of inexhaustible energy and a mind determined to use it.

It didn't matter to Sonic where he was running. When he got out for a run he never knew where it would end. He needed running like he needed eating, drinking and sleeping as well. He was running because nothing in the world was more fun to him.

_Okay, maybe busting Eggman's robots__,_ Sonic thought and smiled. He ran on a few more hours and enjoyed the great mountains around him. Sonic loved mountains.

Eventually he stopped on the edge of another plateau and took in the view in front of him. He was standing on a small rocky path and beneath him lay - paradise. A large valley covered with green grass and dark green forests, a blue river like sparkling sapphires winding through it and in the background on the other side of the valley rocky grey mountains with summits like sharp teeth surrounded the valley. It was lying down there like a precious green gem, flooded by the midday summer sunlight.

"Wow", Sonic whispered, nearly gasping in fascination.

_Why the heck do people say the beach is the nicest place to go?_ Despite the fact that Sonic didn't like beaches because there was too much water, and he didn't like much water in one place at all, he wondered if you could see something like that at the beach.

The blue hedgehog stood several minutes, unable to take his eyes off the beautiful nature beneath him. Then he sat down under a nearby tree, still watching the scenery in complete awe. He crossed his arms in his neck, feeling perfectly at ease, and relaxed. The place was way too pretty just to leave quickly again. Even a mostly restless guy like Sonic had to consider this location the perfect place for a chill out.

The warm summer sun shone down on the hedgehog, warming his body comfortably. A gentle breeze of wind palmed thought Sonic's blue fur and he inhalated deeply the wonderful smelling air. Slowly Sonic's eyes dragged themselves closed and the hedgehog began to doze off.

* * *

"Aaaahhhhhhh!"

Sonic jerked awake out of his peaceful nap to a painful yelp. He jumped to his feet and looked around. _Who had that been?_

He could see nothing more than before his nap, the place was still beautiful and the blue hedgehog didn't spot any persons around him. Attentive Sonic looked down at the valley beneath his position, searching for any movements down there.

Someone was in trouble and might need help.

Sonic began to run, following the path that led him along the valley's side. Finally the hedgehog spotted a movement on the green grass from the corner of his eye and stopped to look at it.

Eight red robots, hovering in the air by jetpacks on their metal backs and obviously armed, had surrounded a red echidna, who was sitting on the ground, holding his left leg with both hands.

Sonic couldn't see his face, but he didn't need to see it to recognize the echidna. His name was Knuckles, and it was easy to recognize him because he was the only living echidna on Mobius. Knuckles was the last of his kind and normally staid on Angel Island, an island floating in the sky above the planet by the power of the Master Emerald. Knuckles was the guardian of the Master Emerald and only left his island for short periods of time, usually to do treasure hunting, which was his favourite hobby. Knuckles was known for his short temper and his stubbornness and also for being sometimes a bit naïve.

To Sonic the red echidna was friend and rival at the same time. Sonic and Knuckles often got into conflicts, that normally led to fights, but none of their arguments were completely serious. Neither the hedgehog nor the echidna would ever admit it, but they were much more friends than rivals.

Sonic clenched his fists angrily. Knuckles was a tough fighter and a bundle of robots was not meant to be a serious threat to the echidna. _They must have caught him by surprise, while he was off his guard_, Sonic thought. He knew it was more then difficult to catch Knuckles off his guard anyway. Considering the fact that the echidna was sitting on the ground and didn't fight off the robots, Sonic knew his friend must be injured.

Not wanting to lose any more time, Sonic left the path and sped down the slope, directly heading for the group of robots. A sonic boom echoed through the hills of the valley, was reflected by the canyons and summits of the high mountains of the environment, and thrown back hundreds of times as Sonic reached his full speed.

The robots turned around to the blue flash, but it was already too late for the two of them that stood closest to the blue hedgehog. Sonic reached them at full speed, jumped up and performed his spin attack to hit them. Curled into a tight blue ball, his sharp spikes completely ripped up the robots' metal armour as he hit them like a cannon ball. He uncurled and hit a third robot with a homing attack, even before his feet had touched the ground again.

One of the robots pointed its metal arm at the hedgehog. "Target identified as Sonic the Hedgehog", it snared," priority one orders override: Destroy Sonic the Hedgehog. Priority two orders delayed." It aimed his right arm at the red echidna on the ground and hit Knuckles with a hard electric shock. The echidna yelled in agony, then he collapsed to the floor unconscious.

"Hey, is that what you guys call 'delay'?", Sonic shouted angrily at the bot.

Instead of dignifying the hedgehog's question with an answer, all five Badniks started attacking the blue blur. Sonic dodged a few laser beams and destroyed two more robots with a quick spin. Then he jumped between two of the left ones, stood perfectly still for two seconds. Both robots shot a missile at the hedgehog, but Sonic had back-flipped quickly and instead of hitting the hedgehog, the robot's shot themselves and both of them exploded at exactly the same time.

Sonic turned around and looked into a glowing laser gun, which was ready to fire. Sonic grinned at the robot. "Sorry pal, you really need to be faster than that to hit me!" He span into the robot's chest and the machine fell apart.

Sonic ran over to the echidna and knelt down at his side. Quickly he checked out on his friend's breathing and pulse and sighed in relief when he found it okay. Knuckles had been knocked out by the electric shock, but that was nothing to worry about. A real reason to worry was Knuckles' leg. It was bleeding badly. The blue hedgehog looked around. He needed something for a bandage to stop the blood from flowing, but he couldn't see anything like it. They were surrounded by the smoking rests of busted robots and by nothing more than nature. Sonic didn't know what else to do, so he pressed his left hand on Knuckles' wound.

The echidna stirred at the touch and slowly began to open his eyes.

"Knuckles! Can you hear me? Knuckles!"

"Uh -- Sonic? – What happened? – Why – ouch!" Knuckles had tried to sit up and pain flashed through his injured limb.

"Careful, Knux. That leg of yours looks bad and if you move too much the bleeding might get worse." Sonic watched as the echidna sat up sensibly slowly this time and looked down on his leg.

"Don't you know anything more efficient to stop something from bleeding than pressing your hand on it, hedgehog?"

Sonic shrugged. "I know we need a bandage and better sooner than later, but I don't have anything. Look around, we're in the middle of nowhere. Where the hell should I take it from?" Sonic had sounded sharper than he had intended, but he was worried and he didn't like not to know what to do.

Knuckles looked from the hedgehog's face to their surroundings and back again. Sonic was right, there was nothing. Nothing useful. He sighed. "Okay, I'm sorry Sonic. It's not your fault. It looks more like you saved my butt." He hesitated a moment, then continued. "Thanks, Sonic."

Sonic regarded the echidna in surprise. Knuckles didn't say thanks very often, so that it was a rare pleasure to hear that word of him. For a moment Sonic didn't know what to say.

But he didn't need to say anything. It was Knuckles who spoke again. He pointed at a smoking robot. "What's that blinking light over there?"

Sonic's eyes followed Knuckles' arm and he spotted a red pulsing light as well. He stood up. "You stay here", he said in Knuckles' direction and to Sonic's confusion the echidna didn't protest, he just pressed his own hand on his wound and followed the hedgehog's movements.

Sonic walked over to the destroyed robot. The blinking light was emittered by a small device in the right side of his head. Sonic regarded it suspiciously, trying to find out whether it was a bomb or some other threat or not. Then he took it and pulled it out of the metal skull. It was a bit smaller than Sonic's fist and it was still blinking after Sonic had removed it from its former place.

The blue hedgehog was absolutely no expert on technical stuff; normally he left things like that to Tails. But even Sonic could identify this thing; it was some kind of a radio device. Maybe it had been used by the robot to report home about the mission success or something else. Sonic didn't really want to know, it didn't matter anyway.

_A radio set, hey? – Maybe I can use it to…_

Sonic's thoughts were interrupted by Knuckles. "Hey Sonic, you okay over there, what is that thing?"

"Yeah, I'm fine." Sonic turned around to face the echidna again and started to walk back to the place where Knuckles was still sitting on the ground. "It's some kind of a radio set. I'm not exactly sure about how it works, but maybe I can use it to call help."

"Help? I don't need any help. I can look after myself. I –"

"Yes, of course, I've seen that," Sonic intervened at the risk of making Knuckles angry. "You had everything under control, right. Listen, Knuckles. I don't doubt the fact that you can take care of yourself. You always did." Sonic looked in the echidna's eyes and tried to use all his patience to convince him that this really wasn't the moment to be too proud. "But being able to take care of yourself doesn't mean you can't take help if it's offert. Honest, Knux, this is bad. We need to do something about that injury, but none of us can. So we have to call. I won't just sit here looking at you bleeding yourself to death. I don't care if you like it or not, but I will help you. I know you can't stop me from doing it and I also know that it's the right thing to do. And I know that you know that too." Sonic took a deep breath.

He looked at Knuckles. For a few seconds the echidna stared completely astonished at the hedgehog, then his look changed to somewhat abashed and he dropped his gaze.

"You're right," Knuckles said, more quiet than usually. "Who are you going to call?"

"Tails I guess. We know we can trust him and I know the frequency of the radio in the Tornado. His workshop isn't too far away from here. I think he can be here in 15 minutes if he flies at full speed."

Knuckles nodded. Sonic sat down a few meters away from him on the former chest of one of the robots and looked at the radio set. He turned a few switches. It was an easy device and Sonic had changed the frequency quickly. He lifted the mobile radio to his mouth and spoke in it. "This is Sonic calling the Tornado. Tails can you here me? This is urgent business. Come in Tails. Do you read me?" Sonic stopped the transmission to listen for an answer.

It came immediately. "Hey Sonic, this is Tails. What's the big emergency? You in trouble?" Tails' voice sounded worried even through the radio's cracking.

"It's not exactly me. It's Knuckles. He has been injured. Quite badly. We have nothing for bandages, but we need to fix it quickly. Can you find out were we are and come here?"

"Stay on transmission, Sonic. I try to locate you."

While he was waiting, Sonic shot a glance over at Knuckles. The echidna's face was slightly sweaty and it seemed to Sonic as if he had paled a little.

"Sonic?" Tails' voice through the radio set again. "I got your position. I will bring bandages and stuff as fast as I can." The noise of the starting engine made it difficult for Sonic to understand Tails' last words.

"We'll be waitin'". The hedgehog smiled, relieved to have a friend like the little fox he knew he could always rely on.

"Hang on. Tornado over." The radio in Sonic's hand cracked a last time when Tails cut off the transmission. Sonic put it on the grass beside him. Now it was waiting and Sonic hated nothing more than that.

He stood up to sit down at Knuckles side again. Now he had the time to ask the echidna what he had thought of all the time since he had intervened in the fight. "Why were the robots attacking you?"

Knuckles lifted his gaze from his leg to look at Sonic. "I don't have any clue." He paused. "I hadn't noticed that there were robots around. I was just walking here. I was on my way back to Angel Island from the ruins of an old temple I visited, to do treasure hunting, you know."

"You didn't notice them? Normally it's difficult to surprise you, Knux. And if you are off your Floating Island, it's twice as difficult."

"I dunno. I was in thoughts." Knuckles noticed Sonic's asking look and continued, in a slightly sharper tone, "None of your business, Sonic. By the way what are you doing here, as you said, it's the middle of nowhere."

The hedgehog smirked. "Well, Knux, you're not the only one who's got a hobby. I'm on a run. In fact I have been out running for about a week now." His smirk deepened a little, getting ironic. "Your yelp down here jerked me out of a wonderful nap."

"Nap? I thought you said you're running." Knuckles grinned, also not entirely serious.

"Sure, but it didn't mean I don't take breaks sometimes."

"And to that I woke you up, Sonic; you would have yelled as I did if you were shot in your leg without even knowing that there was somebody to shoot you. Normally, Eggman's robots don't attack on surprise."

"I know that. Something was different about them." Sonic paused and his gaze switched away as he remembered the words of the robot.

"Sonic? What's wrong?"

The hedgehog looked back at Knuckles. "I just remembered what the one of these guys said." He waved his right hand at the remaining garbage of former Badniks. "It said that some priority one orders would override priority two orders and that these were to be delayed. Then it zapped you with the electrical shock."

"Yeah, I remember that just too well. But - What's to wonder about that I was electrocuted? Stuff like that happened to all of us several times before."

"Correct, but it seems like they had a concrete order to do something with you. They shot into your leg, so that you couldn't get away and then they surrounded you." Sonic paused to get sure about his thoughts. "It kinda looks like they wanted you alive."

"Maybe they had no deadly weapons. Or they were too stupid to use them."

"They had lethal weapons, Knuckles. They had loads of them and they knew how to fire them, I can tell. You missed on the fight, but you can bet they really knew how to shoot." Sonic grinned. "They were too slow to hit me, but that's nothing new."

"Not really," the echidna answered flatly. "And it doesn't matter what they were ordered to do to me."

"Yeah," Sonic looked around, "they don't really look like if they were in the condition to put up a fight by any definition." The hedgehog smiled.

Knuckles didn't answer. The red echidna was looking exhausted and shut his eyes.

Sonic shifted closer to Knuckles, took the echidna's hand which was still pressing on the wound away carefully and laid his own left hand on it. Knuckles opened his eyes a bare slit to glance at Sonic a bit confused. Sonic pushed Knuckles' shoulder with his right hand, forcing him to lie down aback on the grass. "I think you should relax and rest a little. I can take care of that."

Instead of an answer, Knuckles let his head fall back on the ground and closed his eyes again. Sonic looked down on him, beginning to feel really worried. Knuckles' left hand was bloodied all over, so was his leg; and the echidna's face had paled more. His red friend was loosing too much blood. _Hurry it up, Tails_, he thought.

* * *

Sonic took a deep breath of relief as his ears caught a familiar sound. The hedgehog would have recognized it out of thousand other planes. The engine of the Tornado. Tails was coming. "Hey Knux, here comes our first-aid fox." He didn't get an answer. Knuckles just lay there and didn't move. "Knuckles? Knuckles, you still with me? Come on, hey Knuckles!" No use. The echidna must have passed out. Sonic sighed.

The Tornado touched down on the grass and Tails stopped the plane only a few meters from Sonic and Knuckles. The young two tailed fox jumped out of the plane before the propeller had stopped spinning and ran over at his two friends, carrying a red first-aid bag.

"What took you so long?" Sonic smiled at his foxy friend, not really serious, trying to lighten the situation up a little for his young friend.

"Sorry, the wind was blowing in the wrong direction."

Sonic wasn't sure if Tails was joking or not and couldn't face asking. Besides, they had more important things to do now.

The fox opened the bag and took passed a bottle of water to Sonic; and the hedgehog cleaned the wound from blood before the two of them started to bandage it. Tails held Knuckles' leg and Sonic pulled the wrap as tight as he could around it.

A few minutes later they had managed a bandage both Sonic and Tails considered efficient. The hedgehog leant over the still motionless echidna. Knuckles hadn't stirred throughout the whole procedure, although Sonic had been somehow radical in his intention to make the wrap as tight as possible. The echidna's red fur was matted with sweat and the colour of his face unusually pale.

Sonic turned back to face Tails. The fox hadn't asked a single question about what had happened, since his arrival a few minutes ago he had been completely concentrated on nursing up Knuckles. Now that they had finished with the most urgent problems, Tails looked at his blue friend, demanding to know how Knuckles had ended up like that.

"I was lying up there, taking a nap," Sonic pointed at the mountains on the right side of the valley," when I woke up by a yelp. I found Knuckles sitting on the ground surrounded by robots. He was injured and sorta outnumbered. So I rushed here and told these metal guys I don't like it if friends of mine are shot."

Tails looked around. "It looks like you made that a clear point to them."

"They won't do anything like it again." Sonic smiled, then his face turned serious again. "They had an order to do something with him." He looked down on Knuckles. "I'm certain they had followed him here, and waited for the perfect moment to shoot him on surprise. It seemed to be a planned operation and every time I see Eggman robots on something like a planned operation, I get the familiar feeling that this weirdo is up to something. Knuckles thought it was nothing special about it, but I know Eggman for longer than he does. He is planning something."

"What, Sonic?" Tails looked at his best friend with big eyes.

"I don't know. But maybe we'll find that out soon enough. That's usually the case anyway." The hedgehog paused and his gaze returned from Tails to the still unconscious echidna on the grass. "We need to bring him somewhere he can rest and recover a little."

"You're right. He looks like if he really needs a rest." Tails looked over at the Tornado. "Let's put him in the plane. We can bring him to my workshop. It's not too far away and it's safe for him there."

Sonic nodded at the fox. He knelt down and scooped the echidna up to carry him through the busted robots over at the biplane. Then he looked up. For Sonic himself jumping into the plane was a cinch, but Knuckles' motionless body was heavy and Sonic didn't want to risk hurting him further.

Tails looked at Sonic as if he could read his thoughts. _Maybe he can_, Sonic thought. They had known each other for years and if somebody knew nearly everything about Sonic, Tails did.

The young fox smirked. "You look like you could use a lift."

Sonic smiled back. "Yeah, it might come in handy under these circumstances."

Tails began to spin his twin tails quickly; by using them as a propeller, the fox could fly. He grabbed under Knuckles' armpits and flew upwards with him. Then he let Knuckles sink down in the rear seat carefully. Sonic climbed to the plane's front to stand on the wings.

Sitting down in the pilot seat Tails started the engine. The Tornado's propeller started spinning and slowly the biplane gathered speed. Eventually Tails pulled the control stick towards himself and the Tornado raised its nose into the blue sky's air, flying a turn, and headed for Tails' workshop in the Mystic Ruins that was also the two tailed fox' home.


	2. Chapter 2: A Hostage And An Ultimatum

**A Hostage And A Strange Ultimatum**

Sonic woke the next morning at sunrise. He yawned and blinked the sleep out of his eyes. Sitting up on the couch he had slept on in Tails' workshop, he looked around. It was quiet now. Sonic took on his sneakers and walked up the stairs to Tails' apartment on the second floor, carefully trying to avoid any noises and wake up the others.

The blue hedgehog opened the living room's ajar door and smiled when he spotted Tails. The young fox was lying on the couch; curled into a small, orange furred ball, one of his twin tails under his head, the second one entwined around his body. He appeared as if he was having a nice dream, a small smile was on his face.

On his way to the kitchen, Sonic shot a short glance in Tails' bedroom, where Knuckles was sleeping. After Tails and Sonic had brought him here yesterday, they had put the injured echidna in Tails' bed. When Knuckles had wakened up, he almost immediately had started protesting that Tails should sleep in his own bed and he could take the sofa. Sonic had convinced Knuckles to delay that matter to after dinner and much to the hedgehog's satisfaction he hadn't needed to argue about that with Knuckles yesterday again; the echidna had been so tired and exhausted that he had fallen asleep even before he could start an argument. And normally Knuckles was really quick in starting arguments. Now the echidna was lying on his back, snoring a little. Sonic grinned and shut the bedroom door again.

In the kitchen, the hedgehog first ate the two leftover pancakes from yesterday evening. Now that he had reduced his hunger a little, he decided to wait for his two friends to wake up and then have a breakfast all together.

Unable to sit around when waiting, Sonic left the apartment again, crossed the hangar and stepped outside. The warm orange sunshine on his fur and the fresh morning air felt great and Sonic began running. After a few miles, he could feel the last sleepiness fade and the familiar energy float through his body.

He hadn't slept a lot that night. He had been unable to stop thinking about these somehow strange robots. He had been lying awake for long, racking his brains about what his arch enemy could be up to. And the problem was he still was not a single step nearer to an answer than he had been yesterday in the afternoon. All this thinking appeared to have been completely useless.

Somehow, after midnight, Sonic had finally fallen asleep and now, with every mile he ate, the last events and his worries became a more and more unimportant blur of thoughts.

* * *

The easy feeling that had developed in Sonic throughout his morning run disappeared more than rapidly by the time he reached the workshop again about two hours after sunrise.

First, the hedgehog saw that the hangar door was wide open, then he spotted a bright red shape, picking out against the green grass more than obviously. _Knuckles,_ Sonic thought running over to the motionless echidna lying face down on the floor. Kneeling down at his side, Sonic spotted a bump on his head, but he could see him breathe.

Sonic didn't need to ask who it had knocked him down; definitely the answer was lying directly next to him. A robot, an Eggman robot to be accurate. This one was clearly out of work and at the moment Sonic couldn't spot any others of his kind.

The hedgehog eyed around cautiously, waiting for somebody to come out to attack him. This situation was exactly one of that kind that made Sonic's entire instincts yell: "Trap!".

But there was no one attacking him. Still not completely sure whether he was being lured into a trap on not, Sonic focussed his attention on Knuckles. The echidna stirred as Sonic turned him around, then he opened his eyes the barest slit to look at Sonic. "….So-nic? …..I'm sorry …. Sonic I …. couldn't …..", the echidna whispered.

Sonic held his shoulders and shook him slightly. "Knuckles! What happened?"

The echidna still stared at Sonic, glassy-eyed, but his gaze was now focussed on the hedgehog's face. "Sonic …. Eggman was here," he managed to say, "He ….. has Tails!"

"What?" Sonic's eyes widened with shock. "When has he been here?"

Knuckles shook his head. "I…. don't know. …. I woke up and heard noises. ….. Tails …. he was in the hangar …. chased by Eggman's robots." The echidna faltered gasping.

"Okay, slowly Knux, don't overstrain yourself," Sonic tried to calm him down a little, although he had problems to stay calm himself. Trying his best being patient with him, he waited until Knuckles had caught his breath and continued.

"The robots surrounded him … and then one of them captured him…… He was shouting for help and struggled …but it was no use." He paused again, but this time more to order his thoughts. "They brought him out here; they had some kind of flying vehicle …… I tried to stop them, but I couldn't run and everything was spinning… I managed to destroy one of the bots, but then I was knocked out by the others …… I'm sorry I was too slow Sonic…"

"It's okay, it's not your fault Knuckles", Sonic assured him, "You tried your best, I can see that."

The echidna didn't look completely convinced.

"Come on, let's get inside first," Sonic tried to change the subject. "Can you walk?"

"I'm not sure … everything's still spinning, I don't even know for sure which way is up…" A small abashed smile at being so helpless appeared on Knuckles' face.

"Okay, I'll help you." Sonic grabbed under Knuckles' armpits to pull him up. The echidna was swaying alarmingly and Sonic quickly put his arm around his waist to support him. Then he slowly began to walk over at the hangar. Knuckles could hardly hold himself to his feet and Sonic ended up more carrying him than backing him.

Inside, Sonic sat Knuckles down on the sofa he had slept on the last night. Knuckles had already felt dizzy yesterday, an aftereffect of the blood loss caused by his injury. Now, after the punch on the head, there seemed to be a concussion to add to Knuckles' problems. His drowsiness was understandable. Knowing there was not much he could do, Sonic forced Knuckles to lie back on the sofa.

"Sonic, we have no time for resting," the echidna protested weakly, "We have to find and rescue Tails quickly. We –"

His words were cut off by Sonic. The hedgehog shook his head. "No way, Knuckles. You aren't in the shape to fight now, and besides, we don't know where they brought Tails," he tried to speak calmly and patiently. Knuckles didn't need to hear in his voice how worried he was. "So I suggest you lie down here and rest a little and I try to find out where to go and rescue him, okay?" Sonic had reckoned with more protests and was fully prepared for an argument about that matter, but Knuckles had already fallen asleep on the couch and didn't answer.

Sonic carefully pulled the blanket he had used that night over Knuckles' body. He looked down on him for a moment. Knuckles would be okay, but what about Tails? _Damn! Why did I have to go running that early? If I had stayed, maybe that wouldn't have happened. No, certainly that wouldn't have happened with me here to protect them. Tails is helpless with too many robots against him and Knuckles is injured. They needed me and I left them alone…_

"No way, knock it off, Sonic!", the hedgehog said to himself aloud. Self-pity, thinking of what would have been and blaming himself for the last events wouldn't help. Neither Tails, nor Knuckles, nor himself saving his friend. This was useless.

Sonic shut his eyes and took a deep breath, trying not to panic because of his momentarily helpless feeling. _Think, Sonic, Tails needs you! _Okay, maybe finding out a few more details about what had happened would help. Knuckles' report had been not really helpful to give him a concrete picture of the events here.

Sonic shot a last glance at the resting Knuckles on the couch, then he rushed up the stairs to begin his investigation in Tails' apartment. While he was searching the several rooms for clues, he thought of the chaotix detective crew and grinned. "If Vector can find traces of lost people, why shouldn't I?", he mumbled, regaining his normal optimism, his head under the sofa in the living room the young fox had slept on.

* * *

When Sonic walked down the stairs again a few minutes later, he had found out that Tails had been in the kitchen, before he had decided to go down to the hangar to work on the Tornado or another machine. Sonic knew that because Tails had cleaned up the dishes, and his favourite screwdriver, which he normally kept in a box under the TV, was missing.

The hedgehog smiled. Detective work was much easier than he'd thought it was. It could have been even fun, if he were able to forget how serious the situation really was. He was worried about Tails, the two tailed fox was more than a normal friend to Sonic, he was like his younger brother and Sonic felt still guilty for not having been able to protect him.

Maybe Sonic was more worried about Tails than the fox was himself, he always believed in Sonic to save him like all the times before when he had been in danger. Sonic clenched his fist determinatedly. Tails was relying on him and he wouldn't disappoint him.

Sonic continued his investigation in the hangar. Some of Tails' machines were broken or at least damaged, Sonic wasn't sure about that, but to his relief the hedgehog found that the plane didn't even have a dent.

Frowning Sonic looked around in the mess of Tails' workshop. He couldn't find a single bullet hole or projectile in here, even no laser burns on the walls or floor. None of the robots had shot. The damage seemed to have been caused by the robots crashing the furniture while chasing the fox. "Eggman's metal heads had always been clumsy," Sonic grinned, but soon had to give in to the seriousness of the situation again.

Why hadn't they shot at Tails or Knuckles? _Normally those guys shoot first and ask questions later, holding back the fire wasn't Eggman's style somehow._ That freak seemed to have fun of destroying things.

"Why didn't he destroy this place or the Tornado? It would have been easy…", Sonic mumbled thoughtfully. But then he decided to finish his search for clues first and rack his brains later.

He left the hangar through the still wide open door and crossed the meadow in front of it. He stopped at the place where he had found Knuckles and examined the remaining parts of the robot the echidna had smashed.

Considering his bad condition, Knuckles had managed quite a punch. The chest of the robot had a huge dent, almost deep enough that the hole in the metal body reached the back of the bot. Now that he came to look closer, Sonic could see the small holes Knuckles' spiky namesakes had left in the hard metal. Knuckles' punch must have damaged some inner circuits, the robot was still smoking and smelling charred, but that didn't help him at all. He'd seen broken badniks before… Realizing he couldn't find out anything more here, the blue hedgehog went back to the workshop.

When he entered it, he noticed a red blinking on Tails' communication computer. Somebody was trying to talk to them on the video phone. _Who could that be?_

Sonic stepped in front of the screen and pressed a button on the keyboard. Eggman's ugly smirk appeared on the screen. The wanna-be-dictator of Mobius stretched his ridiculous moustache. "Hello Sonic, my little blue friend. I see you have returned from your trip. It was about time."

"What do you want, Eggman? Where is Tails?", Sonic retorted furiously. Having to look in Eggman's face without a way to reach him directly made him feel helpless and he hated to feel like that.

"So, you are worried about you foxy sidekick, aren't you? He is my guest," Eggman grinned and stepped aside, so that the camera caught the picture of Tails. The young fox was tied on a chair, gagged so that he couldn't speak, struggling uselessly to free himself. Eggman's grin broadened and he addressed the fox. "Will you stop that struggling, kid? You can't escape, you are only wasting you energy. If you stay calm, it will be much more comfortable for all of us." He turned around to face Sonic again. "I will keep your little friend safe and sound here."

"I'm warning you, if you harm him in any way, you will pay for this…", Sonic interrupted him growling, his voice carrying a dangerous undertone.

Eggman ignored him. "Oh, by the way, where is my special friend Knuckles?" The weird scientist smiled gloatingly when he saw Sonic clenching his fists against his rage.

"Get to the point," the blue hedgehog demanded almost whispering; he was that angry he was barely able to speak.

"Impatient as always, Sonic. But if you ask for it…" Eggman shrugged. "I'm near to my aim of establishing my Eggman Empire. I have a perfect plan to conquer the world. And I want you to be my very special guest at this historical event. You and your red friend Knuckles."

"You can have _me_, but as far as you don't know, Knuckles is in a pretty bad shape at the time and as far as _I_ know this is _your_ fault," Sonic interrupted his speech, his eyes blazing like lightenings of a thunderstorm now. "You were the one who tried to kill him."

"Oh, Sonic, I didn't. Why should I kill him now? It would be useless work, a waste of my precious time."

Sonic just growled angrily.

"Listen carefully, hedgehog. If you want to get your cute foxy friend back, then I suggest you do as I want you to." He paused, clearly enjoying this moment. "You and that Knucklehead of an echidna come to the sacred mountain of the ancient otongas in two days. You will find your little friend there. Bye-bye Sonic, see you there."

"Wait, you can't just –", Sonic began, but Eggman had cut off the transmission and the screen turned black.

"Damn it!" Sonic's fist hit down on the table. He didn't even make a dent in the wood; instead, his fist hurt. Great.

_What now?_

Sonic had never heard of 'otongas' or 'sacred mountains'; he had absolutely no clue why Eggman wanted him to come there. Of course it was a trap, but Eggman had intended to lure Sonic in loads of traps loads of times before, that was nothing new and Eggman wasn't exactly creative in setting new traps for Sonic. Usually, they weren't dangerous anyway.

But why did he want him to bring Knuckles along? If Sonic would have come alone, this was less dangerous for Eggman than having two enemies to take care of. Maybe he was sure they were no threat to his plans; that was what Eggman normally thought every time he came up with a new idea to conquer the planet.

Sonic had started to walk around in circles in the hangar, orbiting the Tornado. He could think much better on his feet than standing or sitting around. _It's useless to think about what Eggman is up to, before I know where to find that weirdo_, the hedgehog realized. So what he had to do first, was finding out what and, more important, where that place was. When he had that information, he still could rack his brains about Eggman's crazy plans. There was one thing Sonic was certain of, it couldn't be anything good.

_So, how to find out were that blasted mountain is?_ Sonic had been to many places on Mobius on his runs or while being on a trip to stop Eggman from establishing his weird empire, but he couldn't remember anything like otongas or sacred mountains. And normally, he had a good memory for places.

Still circling the plane in the middle of the hangar, his gaze fell on Tails' computer. The hedgehog knew it was linked to many others all over the planet, he had forgotten how to call that connection. But what he knew was that Tails used it to gather information about everything he was interested in. Sonic had never been interested in how it worked, but why shouldn't he give it a try?

Sitting down on the chair in front of the screen, Sonic switched on the computer. Humming softly it awoke out of its sleep and the screen turned from black to blue, then a picture of a spinning green cube appeared on it. After a few seconds it changed to a screen image Sonic had seen several times before when Tails had shown him something on it. The blue hedgehog considered it some kind of standard screen.

Sonic used the arrow keys on the keyboard to navigate trough the amount of programs. An endless list of letters, numbers and words rushed over the screen.

"How does that fox manage not to get lost in that mess?", Sonic wondered. He continued scrolling through the list watching out for something that sounded useful. Quickly he realized that the 'mess' wasn't as messy as it seemed on the first look. The stuff was alphabetically ordered.

Sonic stopped at the 'e's. 'Encyclopaedia' sounded like a good first shot to find information. To Sonic's disappointment, it didn't know anything about 'otongas', no matter which more or less sensible way he tried to spell it.

It said a lot about sacred places; in fact, it listed more names of places than Sonic thought existed, but none of them was a sacred mountain. The program knew sacred houses, sacred cities, sacred rivers and even sacred trees, but no sacred mountains. If you entered 'sacred' in connection with 'mountain' it every time just showed the same article about some custom to praise the mountains somewhere near the north pole to bless a winter god, practiced about 500 years ago by a tribe living in icehouses and eating fish all day. _Useless crap_!

Frustrated Sonic closed the program. At least he wasn't the only one who seemed to have never heard of that 'otonga', whatever that was. Thinking about the way Eggman had formulated his phrase, it – or they – had to be a tribe or people. _An ancient people – certainly extinct, because if they still existed nowadays, it wouldn't be a problem to find out something about them. Somebody would know them._

Next Sonic tried a map program. It was some sort of an atlas, but it showed the complete globe and you could zoom in closer to see details of the landscape. Sonic entered 'otonga' in a search frame. Then he tried 'sacred mountain'.

No matches at all.

The rest of the programs appeared useless. There were a lot of games, writing programs and calculators and a lot of stuff that Sonic didn't understand, but could easily be defined as physical or technical stuff. No otongas.

Sonic switched the computer off again.

What should he do now? He needed a new idea how to find this place. For a moment, Sonic considered running out and asking all the people he met. Then, on second thought, he became aware that this was complete nonsense. He couldn't leave Knuckles alone again and besides, even if there was somebody out there who knew about these otonga-guys, it was unlikely he would meet him quickly. It could take years, even for Sonic, who was known as the fastest thing alive, to find out anything. There had to be another way.

Sonic shot a glance over at Knuckles. The echidna knew a lot about all kinds of ancient stuff. Sonic had wondered about his historical knowledge more than once. Knuckles had grown up on Angel Island, as the last of the ancient echidna people, and the whole island was full of his ancestors' heritage, so that Knuckles had been surrounded by old relics his entire life. Additionally his favourite free time activity was treasure hunting, he loved to discover old ruins and mystical places.

_Maybe,_ Sonic realized, _Knuckles is the perfect person to ask_. But he had to wait; his red echidna friend was still out.

* * *

Sonic hated waiting; to be honest, there weren't many things in the world he hated more than being bored – and waiting always ended up as the worst case of boredom Sonic could think of.

The blue hedgehog eyed around in the workshop, desperately seeking something to do. Everything was better than just sitting around. Normally, if there wasn't a trace of interesting or exiting activities, Sonic lay down and closed his eyes for a nap. Napping was much more sensible than being bored to death.

But since Knuckles wasn't feeling better, it happened to be Sonic's duty to keep a vigil here. He couldn't go away or sleep. Besides, Sonic wasn't sure if he could sleep even if he really wanted to. His mind was still filled with worries, questions and emotions, all together tumbling around in his thoughts restlessly. He was absolutely not in the mood to relax.

Fortunately, something gave him a distraction and a sensible thing to do. That something was his stomach, which had for some reason chosen that moment to rumble loudly, reminding the hedgehog that he had only eaten two cold pancakes that morning; and morning seemed to be almost an eternity away now, an eternity of about four hours. And these four hours had been stuffed with stress and excitement, first he had burned a lot of calories on his run and then he had been too busy worrying about his friends and about Eggman to notice how hungry he was. In fact, this feeling couldn't be called hunger any more; it was much closer to acute starvation.

Sonic rushed upstairs and into the kitchen and started foraging for something to eat. To his disappointment Tails' fridge contained neither chilli nor sausages. Nothing for a chilli dog, although Sonic felt like if he really could use one – or even more than one.

Instead, the hedgehog found a lot of all kinds of cookies, but besides cookies, Tails' kitchen was surprisingly empty. Maybe he had needed to go shopping. Sonic shrugged sighing; the biscuits had to do it then. He grabbed a bottle of water and returned to the workshop.

Knuckles stirred at the sound of Sonic's footsteps on the stairs, causing the blue hedgehog immediately to abate his footsteps and pass the hangar nearly soundless, trying not to wake up his friend. Knuckles needed his rest in the first place; he wouldn't be any help to save Tails in a condition like Sonic had found him in. Stopping a few meters away from the sofa, Sonic watched the echidna. Knuckles turned around to lie on his left shoulder, his right hand under his head and slept on. _Good_.

Sonic left the hangar and sat down on the grass, his back leaning against the wall of the building aside the door, and began to eat his biscuits.

* * *

It was a little more than two hours later. Sonic had finished the majority of the cookies, but then thought of Knuckles and that he might be hungry and need a snack as well when he woke up. The hedgehog stood up and entered the workshop again, to look after the echidna.

Knuckles was still sleeping, but rolling over restlessly, his breathing fast and irregular. Sonic raised an eyebrow, slightly worried again, and put his hand on Knuckles' sweaty forehead to check out on his temperature. Then he sighed in relief, at least his friend didn't have a temperature.

The echidna stirred again, winced as if in pain and mumbled: "No …. you have to stop it …………. chaos…….. no…….." He turned from his back to his right side and rolled back rapidly.

Sonic looked down on him. This looked like a really bad nightmare.

"….Emeralds ………….. dangerous ……..no……", Knuckles quavered silently in his sleep

"Okay, that's enough of it; this isn't restful any more," the hedgehog decided. He wanted to lean forward to wake his friend, but he didn't need to. With a small, not very guardian-like yelp Knuckles jerked out of his sleep. He sat upright from one second to the next, that quickly that he gave the unprepared Sonic the shock of his life.

Amethyst eyes wide open the echidna stared at Sonic, his look one of puzzled confusion. The blue hedgehog wasn't sure if he knew where he was and what was going on. "What was ---- Sonic?", Knuckles managed to say between gasps.

"It's okay, chill out, Knux. Whatever it was, it was just a dream," Sonic tried to calm him.

"…Dream?"

"Yeah, or to be more concrete a really bad nightmare. But it's over, you are safe here. Look around – no danger at all." He tried a smile.

Knuckles let himself fall back on the pillow, still panting, and shut his eyes. Sonic didn't say a word; knowing the echidna needed a moment to pull himself together. The hedgehog sat down on the couch table and waited. A few moments later, Knuckles opened his eyes again and sat up, the expression in his eyes still somewhat alarmed. Sonic reached for the bottle of water and passed it to him. With a short nod, Knuckles took it and drank.

The blue hedgehog waited until he had finished drinking, then he asked: "What have you been dreaming of? Sometimes it helps talking about it."

Knuckles hesitated briefly and Sonic prepared for a sharp answer, but it didn't come. Instead Knuckles sighed. "It was not only an ordinary nightmare as an aftereffect of being injured," he explained. "It was more like – well, a vision or foreshadow of something."

Sonic's look showed that he wasn't sure how far he could believe Knuckles' discernment at the time. "A foreboding? Of what?"

The echidna hesitated again. "That's difficult to explain… you know Sonic, there is a close link between me and the Master Emerald, and an even stronger connection between the Master Emerald and the seven Chaos Emeralds."

Sonic nodded. He knew Knuckles had some kind of sixth sense for the Emeralds. Sonic himself knew the feeling too, but it appeared to him mostly when he used the power of the Chaos Emeralds to transform into Super Sonic. In this condition, one unity with the Chaos Energy, he had a sharp sense for things that were connected with it. Knuckles couldn't use the Chaos Emeralds directly as Sonic could easily, but he could draw to the Master Emerald without problems, even over huge distances. Although Sonic would never really understand how Knuckles did it, his intuition towards the Emeralds was more than trustworthy, you could rely on it.

"What's wrong with the Emeralds?", the hedgehog asked.

"I'm not sure. But I'm certain they are in danger." He paused a moment and his gaze switched away, looking in an undefined infinity somewhere behind Sonic. Knuckles' voice sounded like far off as he continued speaking. "The seven Chaos Emeralds are near together and the Controller can't protect them from destruction. Someone else has to take them away from where they are now or their power will be abused to cause sorrow and disaster."

Sonic shook himself, his spikes ruffling, feeling his blue fur stand upright; something in Knuckles' tone and words was giving him the creeps.

Knuckles shook his head a few times and his gaze returned to meet Sonic's eyes. "I don't know. I don't even know where to search them or what danger might threat them. But I'm certain it exists." He stopped, now slightly shivering himself.

"Anything else?", Sonic asked.

Knuckles concentrated for a moment. "A picture … it's blurry, like looking through fog or mist … a volcano, I guess." He shook his head again. "But I don't know if it has anything to do with the rest." He shrugged. "Maybe it's nothing. Perhaps I'm just hallucinating due to too much blood loss and concussion."

"No," Sonic shook his head. "Certainly you are not in the best shape by now, but your feelings about the Emeralds were always reliable." He paused and his gaze fell on the box of cookies on the table. Somehow relieved to be able to change the subject, he pointed at the snack. "Want something to eat? You must be pretty hungry. Oh, and by the way, how are you feeling?"

Knuckles reached out for the cookies and shrugged. "My head hurts and I still feel dizzy, and I don't know exactly what to blame for that: losing more blood than is healthy for me, being knocked on my head or dreaming weird stuff about the Emeralds; but at least the world has stopped spinning around me." He crunched the first biscuit into two. Chewing, he continued. "Have you found out something about Tails?"

Sonic's eyes hardened a bit. "Yes and no. He's alive and he seemed to be okay as far as you can be okay as a hostage anyway. I got a video message from Eggman."

"What?! That guy really dares to call? What did he want?"

"It seemed to be some kind of ultimatum. He said he had the perfect plan to establish his empire now."

Knuckles groaned and grimaced. "I've heard that one before."

Sonic smirked tormently. "He just doesn't give up." He shrugged. "And he seems to be a fan of yours, Knux. He addressed you especially; he wants me to bring you along. Eggman wants us to come to the sacred mountain of some tribe called 'otongas' if we want Tails back. Ever heard of that?"

"Otongas, huh? …. Otonga….", he mumbled, obviously racking his brains. "… and sacred mountain……? You have any clue where?" The red echidna looked up at Sonic again.

The hedgehog shrugged. "Sorry, no idea at all. I've never been to any place that fits this description or heard of it. I tried to find out something using Tails' computer while you were asleep, but that thing was as stupid as I am. I found a lot of useless crap, but nothing helpful." He paused, looking at Knuckles. "I hoped you could know something. You know a lot about history after all."

"Sorry, Sonic, but I hear that word for the first time as you do." He dropped his gaze on the cookie he held in his hands, turning it around thoughtfully, as if the biscuit knew a solution for their problems. Then he raised his eyes again to look into Sonic's face. "But I may know a way to find out."

The hedgehog's eyes widened surprised. "You do?"

"Bring me to Angel Island!", Knuckles demanded.

"Angel Island?" Sonic's look became puzzled. "Who are you planning to ask up there? You are the only person who lives there."

"I'll ask the past, Sonic." Knuckles allowed a small smirk to cross his face when the blue hedgehog watched him now in complete confusion and disbelief. "You know, Sonic, my people have vanished in the ancient times, but a lot of them is still on the Island," he explained before Sonic had the chance to entirely doubt his sanity now. "A lot of knowledge. I know it is only the summit of an iceberg of their former wisdom left; but my library on Angel Island contains more ancient documents than any other place on Mobius. So if there is a place to find out about that people and their mountain, we will find out there. And when we know, we can go and kick that Eggman freak in his big butt. Sounds good to you, Sonic?"

The blue hedgehog eyed the echidna. "Don't think I want to spoil your fun, Knux, but you aren't exactly in the right condition to put up an all-mighty fight against Eggman once we find him."

Knuckles shrugged, as if that matter was of absolutely no importance to him. "As you like to say: just leave it to me. Bring me to Angel Island and everything will be fine. Trust me, will ya?"

Sonic sighed and knuckled under. "Okay, whatever you want. At least I can do something besides sitting around." He pointed at the Tornado. "Let's go!"


	3. Chapter 3: A Mysterious Old Enemy

**A Mysterious Old Enemy**

Sonic reduced the plane's speed and altitude when the Floating Island appeared at the horizon in front of him. He turned around over his shoulder to look at Knuckles. The echidna had dozen off somewhere on the flight. "Hey Knuckles! Wake up! You're coming home!" Sonic grinned.

Knuckles opened his eyes and yawned. "I know," he said and Sonic wasn't sure if Knuckles really knew or not, but couldn't face asking how he knew where he was while he was asleep. But it didn't really matter.

"So, why am I telling you these things if you already know?", he asked, still smiling, and turned around again to concentrate on where he was flying. "Dear first class passengers, do you have any preferences for a landing place? Your pilot is waiting for any special wishes," he continued jokingly.

"Is the meadow at the bottom of the Emerald altar big enough for a landing? I don't want to have to limp too far," Knuckles retorted, ignoring Sonic's lack of seriousness.

Sonic flew over the Island and circled three times over the meadow Knuckles had mentioned. "It's just great." He turned the plane around again to go in for a soft landing on the grass. The Tornado came to a stop on the edge of a circle of pillars that surrounded the altar of the Master Emerald. This was the former Temple of Chaos; in the ancient past Knuckles' ancestors had kept all the Chaos Emeralds here, together with the Master Emerald. Today, the huge green jewel was alone on the top of the altar.

Sonic jumped out of the plane and helped the injured echidna to get down too. Then he followed his friend as Knuckles limped over at the stairs that led up to the Master Emerald. Suddenly Sonic understood what Knuckles wanted here; all the time in the plane he had tried to get through it without having to ask, now that they were finally here, he knew what Knuckles intended to do. Sonic smirked, why hadn't he thought about that before?

Slowly, Sonic walked up the stairs at Knuckles' side. When they reached the top, the echidna was completely out of breath and had to lean against the support of a small pillar to recover. Sonic leaned against another one of its kind and watched his red friend curiously.

After Knuckles had caught his breath, he stepped forward until he stood next to the green glowing Emerald, his nose almost touching it, opening his arms and closing his eyes. His deep voice was all calm and steady as he began to speak old words Sonic knew very well. "The servers are the seven Chaos. Chaos is the power, power is enriched by our hearts. The Controller serves to unify the Chaos."

Sonic's gaze flew from the glowing Emerald to the red echidna and back, wondering if it could hear him. Obviously it could, the huge gem started glowing brighter, emitting a pulsing light. Knuckles was standing perfectly upright; Sonic couldn't even see his chest move with his breath, but maybe Knuckles wasn't breathing anyway.

The Emerald's glow was getting stronger; a green light appeared around Knuckles' body, covering him until Sonic could only see a green shining shape where the echidna was standing. The shape was beginning to float in the air, hovering without touching the rocky ground any longer; all the while the light increased even more; already blinding Sonic, forcing the hedgehog to cover his eyes with his arms, then squeeze them shut.

When he carefully blinked again a few moments later, the glow was gone. The Master Emerald looked as always, just twinkling slightly. Aside of it, Knuckles was lying aback on the floor. Sonic knelt down at his side, but there was no reason to worry about him. He opened his eyes at the sounds of Sonic's footsteps. "You okay, Knuckles?", Sonic asked.

"Never felt better," the echidna replied, smoothly standing again. He peeled up the bandage on his leg. The deep wound was gone, no scratch or scar was left of it.

Sonic knew these effects of the chaos energy, when he was Super Sonic, he could use this power to heal himself or others as well. He didn't know if he could use the Master Emerald like Knuckles did, but it was enough that the echidna could.

The guardian shot a last glance at his precious possession, then he waved Sonic to follow him.

* * *

Hedgehog and echidna got down the stairs and Knuckles directed Sonic to the mountains not far away from the Chaos Temple. They stopped in front of a wall of rock. Knuckles closed his eyes briefly and the rocks shifted away, revealing a secret door that opened to a cave. Sonic wondered what magic or telepathy the echidna might have used to open it, but didn't dare to ask him. He was sure it was a secret; that kind of secret Knuckles wouldn't reveal even under torture.

Entering the cave, Knuckles led his friend through several rooms and chambers. Sonic looked around fascinatedly. He liked mystical places almost as much as Knuckles did; and wondering about the huge amount of rooms, the question how long and how much work it had taken those ancient guys to build this place in the distant past appeared to him. But despite every fascination, the hedgehog hoped they would find out where Tails and Eggman were soon, he could feel the impatience and anxiety grow inside of him by every minute now.

Sonic followed Knuckles into a long room, more like a tunnel than a chamber. Flickering torchlight created a somehow mystical atmosphere in the room. The two longest walls were covered by bookshelves from floor up to ceiling, filled to nearly bursting point with books and scrolls.

Knuckles slowly moved along one of the walls and concentrated on the ancient labels on the ends of the scrolls. If his ancestors had known anything about that 'sacred mountain' Eggman talked of, he would find it sooner or later. Taking the huge number of scrolls in consideration it seemed more like later.

The red echidna was disturbed in his concentration on the writings by an annoying tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.

Knuckles whirled around to look at Sonic. The blue hedgehog was still standing near the doorway, tapping his foot on the floor impatiently, his arms crossed on his chest. The echidna sighed. "Why don't you go out and run, Sonic?"

"Huh?" Sonic's look changed from impatient waiting pose to puzzled confusion. "Don't you want me to help you?"

"As far as I know you can't read these, can you?" Knuckels waved at the walls of writings. "All you can do is get on my nerves and stop me from working."

"Hey, it isn't my fault that your ancestors wrote their texts in cryptic hieroglyphs and not in letters." The hedgehog raised his eyebrows angrily.

Knuckles curled his hands into fist. "Nothing about my ancestors, hedgehog. I'm warning you." He paused and forced his fists to loosen again, praying to the Master Emerald for patience he knew he never had. "Listen, Sonic. Since you can't help me, why should you stay here? That's just boring for you." He regarded the hedgehog in a way parents look at their little children when grouching at the bus stop. "Go out and burn some of your excess energy." Knuckles waved his hand at the door. He reckoned with protests, but Sonic just stared at him a few moments, then turned around and was outside in a second, the sharp wind of his speedy departure blowing some of the scrolls out of the bookshelves. Seconds later the well-known sonic boom echoed through the caves and chambers.

Knuckles groaned. "Kids!", he mumbled, knowing full well that Sonic couldn't hear him.

In fact, Knuckles was just about a year older than Sonic and still not an adult. Both of them were merely teenagers, but Knuckles thought of himself as pretty mature. He had grown up alone on the Floating Island since his parents died when he still was a little kid. He had to take care of himself early and so he thought he was older in maturity than ages.

Sonic could be very mature somehow too, but it only appeared to the echidna as a reaction to very serious, threatening situations. Normally, even in a fight, Sonic was reckless and playful.

Knuckles often stated Sonic was just getting involved in fights for kicks, but deep inside he also knew that there was more about it than thrillseeking. Sonic could fight Eggman and save people, so he did. Knuckles had to admit that it seemed to be some kind of duty to Sonic; and duty was a word the echidna understood very well.

But still, Sonic's sometimes immature and impulsive behaviour could be really annoying.

Knuckles put the scrolls Sonic's speed blew away back to where they belonged. Then he concentrated again on his task. "I can do much better without that hyperactive hedgehog getting on my nerves," he mumbled and focussed his attention on the texts.

* * *

Racing out of the cave and down the slope of the mountain, Sonic crossed the Temple of Chaos with the altar of the Master Emerald. The huge green gem was shining brightly and the look of its gentle light made Sonic feel a little easier.

Knuckles' island wasn't really big. Sonic had finished one lap around it in ten minutes, but by the time he passed by the Emerald altar the fifth time, he felt the restless feeling that had bothered him all day long fade slowly. It was good to be on his feet again, he felt much better only by running around. Knuckles was right, he was no help to him at the time.

_Maybe I should learn reading these symbols sometimes._

Sonic felt a smile appearing on his face, he knew he'd never have the patience for learning something like that. The blue hedgehog was no sitting-around-and-read type; he was an active guy and needed excitement. He just hoped Knuckles would find that mountain soon, so that they could go there and start some action. He couldn't wait to tell Eggman what he thought of him capturing his little friend.

_Hang on Tails_, he thought, _we'll come and save you sooner than you think_.

* * *

After more than an hour of running, Sonic stopped at the edge of the Floating Island. Looking around, he had to admit Knuckles' home was pretty beautiful. Now that he was a little more in the mood to notice things like that, he felt the gentle warm breeze blowing over the Island; somehow different to the wind down on the surface. It was a bit like flying in the Tornado, but since the Island was floating only slowly, the blow wasn't as sharp and cool. Sonic could hear it quietly rustling the soft, green grass underneath his feet and palm through the leaves of the trees.

_Maybe Angel Island is one of the prettiest places on Mobius_, Sonic thought. According to Knuckles, it was the nicest place in the universe, but Knuckles wasn't exactly what could be called objective on this matter. For the echidna, there was nothing like home, near to the Master Emerald, feelings that Sonic could barely understand. Knuckles' connection to the Master Emerald would always remain a mystery to him and a feeling for one special place to call home maybe more than that.

Sonic didn't have a home. He was like the wind and didn't like to stay at the same place for long. There were locations he liked more than others and so he returned to them almost frequently, some of them were just beautiful, some created a slight feeling of adventure everytime he came back to them again, and some of them he just visited because he had friends there.

The blue hedgehog stepped forward until he stood directly at the edge of the island and looked down. They were flying over the sea, appearing a glittering purple painted by sunset. Sonic sat down, dangling his legs over the edge, enjoying the light's warm touch on his face and fur, and watched the huge glowing ball disappear at the horizon and the Island being flooded with orange sunlight.

Slowly darkness fell on Angel Island, the sky turned from orange to purple, to dark blue and then to black. Eventually the moon rose and only half an hour after sunset the sky above Sonic's head was a sparkling firmament of stars, the moon diving the island and the sea beneath it in silvery light.

Feeling slightly tired, Sonic let himself sink back on the soft grass, crossed his hands in his neck and looked at the stars above. There were more stars than he thought existed, maybe you could see them better here because Angel Island was high up in the sky. Small silver and blue pinpricks spread across a dark table cloth.

Twinkling lights ……………thousands of them ……… millions ……billions ……

* * *

Sonic awoke out of a sleep he'd never really intended to take to a soft shaking on his shoulders. "…onic? … Sonic wake up!" The hedgehog blinked and found himself looking into Knuckles' face. The echidna's eyes were sparkling with moonlight and excitement. "I found the otonga and their mountain!"

Sonic jerked upright and wanted to jump to his feet, only to be pulled back crudely.

Knuckles pointed at the groundless darkness beneath them. "You didn't really plan to fall down there, did you, Sonic?"

Sonic gasped at the thought of it and shook his head. He was wide awake now. "No, of course not." He grimaced at the echidna. "Thanks, Knux."

"No problem. I was just preventing Mobius from getting a deep hole when you crash on the surface." Knuckles' smile showed he was just kidding as he blinked an eye at Sonic.

The hedgehog stood up, more slowly this time and carefully looking out for the edge of the Floating Island. "Okay, what did you find out?" Now that he was awake, Sonic's expression was one of impatient curiosity.

"Come along, I'll show you." Knuckles turned around and headed for the mountains.

* * *

Sonic's eyes widened in surprise when they entered the library again. The a few hours ago well-ordered room was now in a complete mess. The floor was covered by paper and parchment, an amount of half unrolled scrolls, opened and closed books were lying around. If Sonic hadn't known better he had said Knuckles had just toppled over one of the bookshelves and all the stuff that had been in it was now spread across the floor.

"Wow, looks like you need to tidy up a little," the hedgehog grinned.

A small shrug. "We can do that later. Look here." Knuckles dug an old book out of the chaos of the floor and opened it on a page somewhere in the middle. The echidna waved the book at Sonic's nose.

Sonic grabbed it and regarded the picture that covered the left page. The yellowed paper showed a creature, looking somehow like a kind of lizard to Sonic, but the tail wasn't as long as the tails of most lizards Sonic had seen before. The colour of his scales could even through the over the centuries bleached colours of the painting be defined as orange and green. The creature seemed to stare at him, the gaze of his cold eyes stabbing and hostile. In his right hand he carried a stick, a strange mixture of spear and torch, with a small flame spearheading it, the blue hedgehog considered it some sort of weapon.

"Nice guy," he said, passing the book back to Knuckles. "So, now that we know how these otongas looked like, who were they anyway?"

"As far as I could find out they were a very old arch enemy to my people. Every information on them is older than 3000 years, some even older than 5000."

"Wow," Sonic whispered, looking down on the scrolls and book at his feet. "5000 years?" He shook his head disbelievingly. Then his gaze returned to Knuckles again. "So they were arch enemies? Why?"

The echidna shrugged. "I'm not entirely sure. A lot of the stuff sounds more like legends or fairy tales to scare little children than trustworthy facts. That's the problem with ancient documents. You can never prove them right or wrong." He paused a moment. "I read a few stories about them and I really have to admit they were giving me the creeps. It says they were living inside the Fire Mountains and had the power to control the inner forces of the planet."

"Huh? What's that supposed to mean?" Sonic looked at the echidna confusedly.

"They had the power to make volcanoes erupt and use their forces to destroy their opponents. I found a short report about whole cities being erased and stop to exist in less than one day."

Sonic gasped.

"I'm not exactly sure why they had a conflict with the echidna people," Knuckles continued, "the information is not very coherent in this matter. All I now is that the two tribes had completely opposite philosophies of life. My people believed in chaos forming the world, nothing that could or should be controlled by anybody."

Sonic nodded.

"The otonga believed in the forces of order and wanted to destroy every sign of chaotic structures on the planet, to rebuild it in a way they thought the perfect order looked like." Knuckles shook his head in disbelief.

Sonic was silent for a moment, then he asked: "Anything more?"

"Yes and no, the most of the rest I found was weird stuff." Knuckles dug out a scroll, unrolled it and began to read it to Sonic. "The powers of order and chaos can't be balanced any more. Order and Chaos exclude each other and once they come in contact, they will eliminate everything. One of them has to destroy itself, or both of them will stop to exist and reality will be damned with them."

Sonic stared at his red friend. "Do you understand that?"

"No, but I know it doesn't sound good."

"If you ask me," Sonic raised his eyebrows, "it sounds like a respectable amount of trouble."

Knuckles nodded, still staring at the scroll in his hands, then he dropped it to the floor. "Okay, now to the sacred mountain." He knelt down and pushed the books and scrolls away, uncovering a paper that was lying beneath them on the floor like a carpet. Sonic knelt down at the echidna's side and regarded the strange picture. It was a map of some sort, obviously a very old one. Vaguely Sonic could recognize some patterns of the landscape of Mobius.

Knuckles pointed at a mountain, the ancient drawer had coloured it black, red and orange and Sonic could see flames at the summit. The mountain was surrounded by a huge plain area.

"A volcano," the hedgehog noticed unnecessarily.

Knuckles nodded. "The sacred mountain of the otonga people. It was their capital in former times; the whole mountain is concaved with tunnels and chambers; in the past thousands of them lived there. I think today they are extinct, so it will be empty." The echidna pointed at a small arrow on the east side of the fire mountain. "This is a secret entrance. The legends say it is dangerous to get in there; the path is told to be full of traps and only a few warriors ever returned from inside the mountain. There must be other entrances and exits, those which were used by the inhabitants of the volcano, but the old echidnas only seemed to have known this one."

"One is all we need, right? And danger never was a problem to me." Sonic smirked, his eyes twinkling with excitement. "Anything more interesting about the place?"

Knuckles thought about it for a moment. "Oh, yeah, you will like it. I found a legend that said there was a monster living in the crater of the volcano, to guard the place and kill all intruders. But I think that's just a horror tale. Nothing to take serious." The echidna shrugged.

Sonic was grinning broadly now. "Monster, huh? I like monsters, you can have a lot of fun with these guys. Normally they are a bit stupid and clumsy, but I can manage."

Knuckles rolled his eyes and groaned. "What did I do to deserve this?", he mumbled under his breath.

Although Knuckles had barely whispered, Sonic's sharp ears had got his words. "Deserve what?", he asked, eying the echidna suspiciously.

"Having to deal with an immature hyperactive hedgehog like you," Knuckles answered readily.

Sonic stared at him a moment and Knuckles prepared for some sort of punch or other attack, but instead, the blue hedgehog broke into laughter.

"Hey, what's so funny?"

"You – when – you – look - - - annoyed like – that," Sonic managed to say, struggling to catch his breath.

With a shrug, Knuckles turned away, rolling his eyes again. By the time Knuckles had removed the mess on the floor and was putting the last books and scrolls back in the shelves, Sonic had stopped giggling.

"So, now that we know where they are, we can go for Tails and Eggman," the hedgehog said. "I can't wait to save Tails and tell Eggman what I think of his idea of taking over the world."

Knuckles nodded. "Me neither. And that trip seems like it will become very interesting, even besides Eggman." The echidna paused a moment and continued when he saw Sonic's puzzled look. "The otonga are maybe even older than my own people, Sonic. And it seemed like they still existed when my tribe vanished tracelessly."

Sonic nodded with comprehension. "You hope they have information about what happened to your people when it disappeared in the distant past?" He looked at his friend. "You know it's unlikely we find a lot, don't you, Knux?"

"Even the smallest piece of information is better than tapping in the dark completely." Knuckles shrugged.

The hedgehog nodded again, he knew Knuckles was the last of his kind, all the others were gone and nobody new to where and why they left. Sonic also knew that Knuckles was suffering from not knowing what happened to them and from being left alone.

In this moment Sonic decided to help his echidna friend as good as he could to find answers to his questions, although he wasn't sure if Knuckles would like the answers they could find. Wouldn't he feel even lonelier if they discovered he really was the last one left? But, contrarily, maybe it was better to know for sure than knowing nothing. _Screw it, Sonic, you can worry about that if you really happen to find out something. At the very moment we have more pressing concerns._

Sonic turned around to face Knuckles again. "Shall we leave?"

The red echidna shook his head. "It's around midnight, Sonic. It looks like tomorrow will be a day of hard work for both of us, so I suggest we get a bit of sleep before we go."

Sonic nodded. Knuckles had a good point. After all, it didn't really matter if they reached the mountain some hours sooner or later. They had plenty of time, staying within Eggman's deadline would be a piece of cake, in the Tornado they could be at the volcano in less than three hours, he guessed. So better resting first and start well-prepared for the fight in the morning.

"You're right, we aren't really in a hurry," he answered the echidna.

Both of them left the cave again and returned to the Temple of Chaos were they had left the plane.

The two friends sat down on the meadow. Sonic stretched out in the soft grass aside the Tornado and was deep asleep within a few minutes.

Knuckles wasn't in the mood to rest right now, sure he was tired, it was late already, but his mind was still fiery and he couldn't stop thinking about what he had read today.

It wasn't only that he suddenly appeared to have a slight chance of maybe finding out something more about his mysterious ancestors. He still hadn't forgotten his nightmare of earlier today and the feeling had grown to more than a restless foreboding. He just knew something was waiting to happen, something that was a threat not only to him.

Knuckles climbed up the stairs and settled down on the summit of the altar, next to the Master Emerald. He always came here when he was troubled.

The bright green light of the gem palmed Knuckles' skin and the guardian's gaze dived into the glow; the facets of the brilliant surface throwing it back somehow, as if the stone was blinking its eyes at the echidna.

Knuckles was beginning to get lost in the infinity of light, starting to feel as if time had come to a stand-still. The nagging anxiety in his mind slowly faded, that slowly that the echidna barely noticed it. Instead safe and calm feeling began to fill his body, it was warm and it felt good, and there were other times to worry.

Without noticing the process, Knuckles fell asleep under the Master Emerald.

* * *

Sonic blinked at the fist beams of sunlight on his face. He yawned and sat up, stretching. The sky above him was preparing to get bright blue, a wonderful summer day morning. The hedgehog jumped to his feet and looked around. When he fell asleep in the night, Knuckles had been lying at his side. Was the echidna up already? Where had he gone?

Following a slight intuition that told him where to find Knuckles, Sonic began to climb up the stairs to the Master Emerald. He stopped and grinned when he reached the platform at the top.

The guardian was lying on the floor, dowsed with the soft green glow of his Emerald, his left hand under his head, his right arm on his stomach, half curled into a red ball. Knuckles' face was perfectly relaxed, his breathing deep and slow.

Sonic stepped at his side and shook him slightly to wake him. The echidna rolled to his back and popped himself up slowly, blinking groggily. "Morning already?"

"Of course, the sun is shining, the sky is blue and all the birds of your nice Island are singing. The day is just waiting for us to go ahead and spoil Eggman's plans," Sonic answered smiling brightly. "Can we go and have some breakfast now?"

Knuckles stood up with a sound that was half yawn, half growl. "I hate early risers. They are always that terribly happy at times other people are still half asleep."

Sonic didn't hear Knuckles' short fit of tired self-pity; he was already halfway down the stairs again. Sighing the echidna followed him.


	4. Chapter 4: Tunnel Danger

**Tunnel Danger**

The sharp wind was blowing into Sonic's face, rustling through his fur and the spines on his head. Sonic pulled the control stick to the left and the Tornado leaned into a soft turn.

The biplane was flying above plain terrain; the large desert beneath them consisted of sand and rock; plants were missing almost completely; only a few lonely cactuses interrupted the stony boredom of brown and grey like small green pinpricks, spread across the plain in a somewhat erratic pattern. Huge mesas picked out of the horizontal ground like parts of the furniture of giants that may use them as tables. Or chairs maybe, that depended on how gigantic the giants were.

A smile crossed Sonic's face at the thought of weird tall people suddenly appearing in front of him. Of course the hedgehog knew giants didn't exist, they were nonsense, fairy tale stuff, but the imagination had something funny.

It was three hours after take-off on Angel Island and their goal had to appear in front of them every moment now. Sonic turned around when he felt the tap of Knuckles' finger on his shoulder. The echidna pointed forwards. "We found it!"

Sonic turned again and now he spotted the huge mountain as well. It was no mesa like every other hill they had seen in the last hour; it had the form of an almost perfect cone, but the apex was missing. It looked like someone had cut off the top of the mountain. The colour of the volcano picked out of the desert surrounding it, its slopes were black; as dark as if no light had ever been shining on them. The glazed sides of the fire mountain were twinkling like wet, but Sonic was sure that in the last year no rain had fallen in this desert zone. The cut-off summit was beset with thin clouds of black smoke, blown in the wind they appeared like in a mystical dance.

In an odd way the volcano was beautiful, the mysterious aura it had about it attracting Sonic like a magnetic force, in the same time it made his fur and quills stand upright and let shivers run down his spine.

It took Sonic several long moments until hew managed to take his gaze off the mountain and turn around to Knuckles. The echidna was still staring at the volcano in front of them, grabbed by its magical appearance in a very similar way to Sonic's strange fascination. But to Knuckles, the mountain had something different, he had the weird feeling of having seen it before, but the memory of where and when was deserting him at the moment. Even without knowing exactly why, the feeling of danger had returned to him. The volcano seemed to the echidna like a sleeping evil spirit. Knuckles shivered.

"It's spooky, isn't it?", Sonic asked, his eyes sparkling excitedly.

Knuckles nodded. "Yeah, it's giving me the worst creeps ever."

"Yep, me too."

Sonic flew the Tornado nearer to the mountain, circling it a few times. Comparing his own flying altitude with the summit of the crater walls, Sonic guessed the elevation of the top was closing to 5 kilometres.

From closer distance the volcano seemed even more dangerous. The huge crater on the top was too deep to look in without flying directly into the smoke and Sonic didn't want to risk his plane in such a manoeuvre. But even only affecting it, the hedgehog could feel the heat of the volcano.

He flew down again, looking out for a good landing place. "Our entrance is at the southeast of that thing, right?", he asked the echidna, who was keeping there ancient travel plan.

"Right, try to land as close to the slope as possible, maybe we need to get away fast once we found Tails. An active volcano is always dangerous."

Sonic nodded shortly.

The flat ground was a perfect airstrip and the Tornado touched the ground that softly that Knuckles in the rear seat needed a moment to get the fact they were on solid ground again. Sonic brought the plane to a stop in a position that would allow them a quick alarm start if they needed one.

Hedgehog and echidna jumped out of their plane and began to walk towards the volcano and Sonic felt a comfortable prickling excitement growing inside him.

* * *

Knuckles was leading the way, carrying his old path guide in his right hand. They had found the entrance faster than both of them had thought and first it looked like it would be lot easier than expected. They were following a small tunnel, cramped with dust and stones, but enough space for the two friends to walk properly.

Five minutes passed and nothing happened. The light of Knuckles' flashlight, tied to his wrist, showed them nothing apart from dark rocks. Sonic was already beginning to get bored. _Where are all the dangerous traps or monsters threatening to kill us?_

They had to stop after a sharp turn of the tunnel when the tiny path they were walking on disappeared under rocks and dust, a wall of pebble stones barricading their way. Obviously the ceiling of the tunnel had collapsed.

Knuckles groaned. "Great. It's blocked!"

Sonic grinned slightly and shrugged. "You didn't really expect the path to be in the same state as it was thousands of years ago when that ancient guy described it. I mean, taking into account that nobody used this way for centuries, you couldn't think it would be nicely cleaned and tidied up for us to use it."

"Of course I couldn't," Knuckles growled, waving the paper at Sonic, "but how shall we dig through? I haven't brought my shuffle claws."

"You haven't? Normally you take these things everywhere you go."

"I forgot to take them because a terribly impatient friend of mine couldn't wait to fly away in his plane." Knuckles' eyes blazed at Sonic.

The blue hedgehog shrugged. "Come on, yesterday you couldn't wait to come here."

The echidna was silent for a moment, then he began again. "But still, now we can't get though and this is all your fault!"

Sonic was starting to get angry too. "It isn't! How should I be the one to blame for the stupid ceiling deciding to crash down?"

The hedgehog and the echidna were now standing almost nose-to-nose, stabbing their gaze at each other, only seconds away from putting up a fight. Sonic had ducked a little, muscles braced, ready to leap at Knuckles like shot from a catapult. The red echidna had curled his hands into tight fists, powerful enough to shatter a rock, the small sharp spikes on his namesakes directed at the hedgehog. The air between them was sizzling, the tension almost touchable. Both of them were standing stiffly, waiting for the other one to do the first punch.

But before one of them got the chance to, the tense silence was broken by a deep noise and the ground under their feet beginning to rumble. An unhealthy cracking sound from the ceiling forced the two opponents to look up.

Wide awake as his instincts were in that situation, Sonic's reflexes acted faster than anything else. Even before he could feel shocked or wonder what was going on, he had grabbed Knuckles' arm and was running. They threw themselves to the floor and were surrounded by a cloud of dust.

* * *

The ground had stopped rumbling as fast as it had begun and the dust was clearing again. Sonic and Knuckles sat up, coughing.

"What – was that?", the echidna gasped.

"An earthquake, I guess. We're inside an active volcano, you remember?"

"Vaguely. What happened?"

Sonic shrugged and wiped the dust from his face. "I had to get us out of there quickly." He grinned at his friend, ruffling shaking small stones out of his spines. "It's lucky for us my reflexes are even faster than your temper."

Knuckles waved his fist at Sonic again, then he hesitated. "Would you be so kind to remind me what we where arguing about again, so that we can go on?"

Sonic looked at the ceiling as if the stones could help him to remember. "I think we were about to discuss who exactly is the one to blame for the blocked way." He grinned.

Knuckles shook his head. "We did it again, Sonic. Why do we always have to argue like that? There wasn't really a reason, was there?"

"Of course not. But don't you like it?" The blue hedgehog blinked his eyes at the echidna. Knuckles grinned back. Sure he did.

They returned to the blockade. Now a few new stones had been added to it.

Knuckles groaned. "Okay, we still need to get through here. And I still don't have any clue how."

Sonic grinned. "I have a plan."

Knuckles whirled around to him. "You do? Which one?"

"Just stand aside, watch and leave the rest to me. I will dig you a perfect tunnel."

The echidna stared at him. Sonic was stepping backwards in the tunnel, eying the barricade in front of them as if he wanted to challenge it. "You don't really plan to do what I think you are planning to do, do you? Sonic, what if it isn't steady and collapses on you?"

"My tunnel will be round and that is the steadiest form a cave can have. And it won't be big; I think it won't be a problem." He was now nearly out of Knuckles' sight, stepping backwards into the darkness, but the echidna was sure he was grinning.

Knuckles shrugged and stepped aside, leaning his back against the wall. "It's not my head and my neck you're breaking. Have a nice time."

Sonic laughed quietly, eyes focussed on the small pinprick of light Knuckles' flashlight was throwing at the barricade. "I always have, you should know that, Knux," he muttered, accelerated and sped towards the block in the tunnel. Before he crashed into it at high speed he curled into a tight spin. His sharp spikes cut through the rocks without problems, digging a small tunnel into them. Only seconds after the impact on the barricade wall, Sonic rushed out of it on the other side. He stopped and turned around. "Hey Knuckles, come on, I could use a bit of light here."

The echidna's voice sounded dull through the short tunnel. "I'm on my way!" As if to prove his words, the small shine of his flashlight appeared in the hole. Moments later, Knuckles crawled out and stood up.

"You see," Sonic grinned, "it just worked great."

Knuckles didn't dignify him with an answer. Instead, he waved his light around. They were standing in a tunnel-like cave and it seemed to be safer than the tunnel on the other side of the block. Ceiling and walls weren't damaged and even the ground wasn't covered by small stones.

Knuckles pointed forwards. The weak light of the lamp was vanishing in the darkness in front of them. "Allright, let's go."

"I was waiting for that," Sonic smiled and turned around to follow the small path into the darkness.

* * *

The tunnel opened to a cave and Sonic and Knuckles stopped at a deep gulf in their way. Sonic threw a stone in it, watching it disappear into the darkness; neither of the two friends able to hear any sound of an impact.

"Oh great," Knuckles commented. "If we fall in here, they can find us down there flat as pancakes." Looking around in a searching way, the echidna spotted a small rocky bridge. He wasn't sure if it was of natural or artificial origin, but it didn't seem anything like trustworthy to him. The rocky path looked as if it was thin like paper.

Sonic had spotted it too. He whistled quietly through his teeth. "Look's like it's the only way across." The hedgehog looked over at Knuckles.

The red echidna was eying the tiny path suspiciously. "Guess you're right. Okay, let's get going."

Both of them took a few careful steps on the rocky bridge.

They had not gotten far when the ground underneath their feet collapsed; and exchanging an unbelieving gaze, Sonic and Knuckles fell into the groundless gulf. The echidna instinctively grabbed on Sonic's hand as the first thing in reach and the hedgehog snatched onto a small protruding stone in the wall; their two lives hanging on three of the hedgehog's fingers now.

The red echidna tried to punch his spiky namesakes in the wall to climb, but the volcanic rock was more solid than everything Knuckles had seen before. It was no use.

Knuckles' weight pulled hard on Sonic's arms. The edge of the cliff was only five meters above them, but unreachable. Sonic turned around.

Knuckles was staring up at him, his eyes filled with fear and desperation. He had grasped the hopeless situation instantly. Sonic would never be able to pull him and his own weight up to save them from falling. The hedgehog's teeth were clenched against pain and his muscles shivering with strain. "Let go of me Sonic," Knuckles gasped, his voice unsteady and too clearly showing his panic. "Save yourself!"

Sonic shook his head vigorously. "No way," he pressed out, "I won't let you down!"

"But you can't hold us much longer. You have to let go." Knuckles' gaze was clinging to Sonic's, his eyes telling better than his words did that the echidna was scared to death; right now a feeling Sonic shared.

Trying to control his own fear, Sonic dived his gaze into Knuckles' eyes. "Do you trust me?"

"Like I do trust myself." Now Knuckles had finally admitted it, maybe he would never say it any time again in his life, but in that very moment the echidna's normal stoicism and pride were completely deserting him. They just didn't matter any longer.

Sonic's eyes widened even more. "Wish us luck, Knux. And I'm sorry already." He let go of Knuckles' hand and the echidna fell backwards, too shocked even to shout. He just stared at Sonic.

The hedgehog pushed himself down, letting go of the stone he had grabbed on to. He leaned forward, his arms behind his back, in a pose like a skydiver. But he wasn't falling; he was running down the vertical wall. He passed Knuckles only an instant after he had let go off his grip. Still stunned the echidna turned around to watch him. Sonic seemed to be already halfway down into the darkness.

Using his arms to give him enough spin momentum, Sonic turned around, still running, now with his back directed to the ground somewhere deep beneath them. Sonic ran faster, desperately trying to escape gravity pulling him down.

Normally, Sonic could run up even vertical walls, but he had never tried it before without having a lot of starting speed already, because he knew that gravity slowed him down when he ran up.

But this time, there was absolutely no starting speed, instead, he was already moving downwards fast and so the blue hedgehog had to fight not only the gravitational forces, but also his falling speed. And that appeared more straining than anything he had done before.

Slowly, as if he was running through some sort of thick soup, Sonic stopped falling down and moved upwards. He accelerated a little more and the distance between him and still falling Knuckles shrunk more than quickly. Then the impact came. The force of two bodies moving fast in opposite directions was strong; and the crash blew the breath out of Sonic's lungs. Gasping in pain, he barely noticed Knuckles having grabbed on to his shoulders in reflex.

The hedgehog forced himself to keep running; now gravitation was pulling twice as hard on him, trying to tear him down into the lethal darkness. Sonic's heart was beating that fast it hurt, his lungs were burning with each of his gasps and every tortured muscle in his body was crying to stop.

But he couldn't, he had to save Knuckles and himself. If he didn't, no one could stop Eggman and rescue Tails.

Sonic's eyes, narrowed to the barest slit, were focussed on the edge above him; it seemed to be miles away. The hedgehog felt his vision getting foggy, his pulse was closing in to explosion point, he knew he couldn't take much more of this.

The safe ground above was approaching only slowly. Sonic could feel Knuckles' desperate tight grip, and put the last remaining energy, and a little more, in the last, long meters.

Finally, after an eternity of about five seconds seeming like a lifetime to him, Sonic's feet touched horizontal ground. He leaped forward, bringing a safe distance between him and the deadly gulf, and stopped. He felt Knuckles letting go of his shoulders, and collapsed to the floor, exhausted, only inches away from unconsciousness. Then the blue hedgehog just lay still, eyes closed, panting, completely out of breath, and waited for his racing heart beat to calm and the pain in his systems to fade.

He hardly noticed Knuckles' voice. It sounded like it was come from somewhere far away. "Sonic? Are you okay? Sonic!" Knuckles' worried tone forced Sonic to open his eyes groggily. The echidna was leaning over him, his face chalk-white pale, and the shock was still standing in his eyes, clear as written in capital letters.

Sonic managed a nod, momentarily too breathless to speak. But it was enough; Knuckles wiped his sweat from his forehead and sat down at Sonic's side heavily.

A few minutes later, Sonic turned his head to his friend. "That – was – what – I – call – a close – shape," he gasped, still out a breath.

Knuckles looked down on him and Sonic had absolutely no clue how to interpret the expression on his face. The echidna shook his head. "Don't you ever do that again, Sonic. You gave me the shock of my life." He paused and failed completely in his try to smile. "I thought I was done for."

"Me too." Sonic grimaced.

"Thank you, Sonic."

The hedgehog smirked. "It was a pleasure. Anytime again, Knux." Sonic let his head fall back on the floor and shut his eyes again.

* * *

It took both hedgehog and echidna several minutes to recover from shock and exhaustion. When Sonic felt the adrenaline level in his blood had decreased enough to sit up, Knuckles was already standing on his feet. "You're not hurt, are you?", he asked, looking down on Sonic.

The hedgehog shook his head. "I'm okay; I just needed a moment to pull myself together."

Knuckles nodded understandingly and struck out his hand at Sonic. The hedgehog seized it and allowed Knuckles to pull him to his feet.

Then he looked around, remembering why they came here in the first place. "I think we need another way across. I don't plan to take the last one again."

Knuckles followed him as he started walking along the pit. For minutes both of them were silent. Then Sonic called out and pointed forwards. "Look!"

The echidna's gaze followed the direction of Sonic's outstretched arm and he spotted a rope leading over the canyon. "Oh no." He sighed. "You are not really trying to convince me to do an artistic tightrope walking here, are you?"

Sonic shook his head. "Too dangerous, we could fall in again easily. No, I was thinking of something else," he replied, testing the strength of the rope by pulling hard on it. Then he nodded, obviously satisfied with the outcome of his examination, and turned to Knuckles. He smirked, and Knuckles didn't like the expression in the blue hedgehog's green eyes.

"What hell kind of kamikaze idea has occurred to your insane brain now, hedgehog?", the echidna asked suspiciously, although some feeling told him he didn't really want to know.

"Insane, huh?" Sonic's smirk broadened to a grin. He already had completely recovered from the shock of nearly falling to certain death a few minutes ago. "Considering that we try to enter an active volcano without even having a map of the place and guided by a report that is 3000 years old, maybe one can classify both of us as freaks."

Knuckles stared at him dumbfoundedly.

Sonic still grinned at the echidna. "Have you ever tried bungee jumping, Knuckles?"

The red echidna regarded him blankly. "Oh no," he said again. "And you really think that might be less dangerous than walking over that thing?"

Sonic shrugged. "If we tie ourselves to the rope, we can't fall in, right?"

Knuckles sighed. "I can _not_ stop you from doing this, can I?"

"You have any better ideas? Then say them fast, patience is not exactly my strongest point."

Knuckles shrugged and surrendered to his fate. He watched Sonic cutting the rope with the help of the sharp quills on his back. Minutes before he had been close to praise Sonic for being reckless, now he wasn't sure if that could lead to anything good.

Tying himself and the echidna to the rope, Sonic smirked at his red friend. "Ready?"

Knuckles groaned. "As ready as you can be for breaking your neck," he grimaced.

The hedgehog seemed to have decided to ignore it and jumped into the gulf, tearing Knuckles with him. They flew through the air and then the wall of the other side appeared in front of them. Abating the impact on the wall with springy feet, they began to climb up the wire. They reached the top of the cliff easily and Knuckles had to admit that this plan hadn't been as risky as it had looked first.

While he loosened the knots that tied them on the rope, Sonic glanced at Knuckles. His eyes were twinkling slightly and the hedgehog could see that the echidna had had fun after all. Sonic smirked.

* * *

They found the tunnel that led them further in the mountain quickly and followed it. It was wider than the one they had used before they crossed the canyon and they could walk side by side now. Finally, the tunnel ended at an intersection of three tunnels. They stopped in the middle of the cave and tried to decide somehow which way to take.

"What now? Do you think it makes any difference which one we –" Knuckles began, but was cut off by a wave of Sonic's hand that told him to be silent. The hedgehog lifted his head a bit, his pointy ears pricked up, he had obviously heard something. Knuckles listened himself, but he didn't need to concentrate for long.

Whirling around, Knuckles found himself facing the source of the noise. Neither he nor Sonic knew where he had come from, but Eggman had appeared behind them, sitting in his Egg-O-Matic attached to a huge robot that was equipped with four weapon arms. A bunch of spotlights around the machine's torso filled the tunnels with light almost as bright as the sun outside, allowing Sonic and Knuckles a good look at their archenemy and also at a small glass cage in the robot's chest that held Tails locked. The fox slammed against the glass and tried to shout at his friends, but no sound left the cage.

Grinning ugly, the weird scientist addressed his nemesis. "Ah, Sonic, nice to see you. I guess you want your friend back, right?" He laughed oddly. "We can maybe negotiate about that later, but right now I have to thank you and especially my very favourite echidna Knuckles here."

Knuckles raised his eyebrows. "Thank us, for what?"

Eggman laughed again, louder this time. "For falling into my trap, right as I expected you to. First, I thought of capturing Knuckles directly to make him tell me what I wanted to know, but you had to interfere Sonic, like you always do. – So, I came up with a new plan and captured Tails, to use him as a hostage and it worked perfectly."

Sonic grinned back at Dr. Eggman. "Okay, if you are such a big genius, what are you planning to do to us? Bore us to death with you tiny talk? What's your great plan anyway?"

Eggman's fist slammed down hard on the dashboard of his vehicle. "Allright, I'll tell you little creeps, so that you can admire my genius!"

"What a pleasure." Sonic looked like if he was going to be sick.

Eggman ignored Sonic's comment. "I read about the ancient people of the otonga tribe and found that their weapon could be very interesting to me, a perfect mean to establish my great empire. There was only one problem. I know what to do once I'm inside the sacred mountain and how to cause the weapon to do what I want. But I didn't have any clue where to find the mountain and how to get in."

"You didn't know? But how'd you get inside then?!" Knuckles stared at Eggman without understanding what the scientist had meant.

Sonic's comprehension came much faster. "You tricked us! You told us to come to the place to rescue Tails and when we did, you just had to follow us!" Suddenly everything began to make sense. Eggman's robots hadn't run the risk of damaging the Tornado by shooting in the workshop, so that he and Knuckles could use it to come here. They also hadn't taken along the helpless echidna, so that Sonic could find him and both of them find out where Eggman had sent them. And he could be sure that they would come, to save Tails and to take revenge for hurting Knuckles. Sonic had to admit that was one of the cleverest plans his arch enemy had ever came up with.

Eggman grinned. "I see you are smarter than I thought, Sonic. But you are a bit too late. Correct, I knew that Knuckles must be able to get the information where the place is and I was absolutely certain that the two of you would lead me right into the mountain."

Sonic clenched his fists angrily and Knuckles cracked his namesakes.

"Oh, can't you take your failure with more dignity? Face it, my small spiky friends. I'm the genius of Mobius. I outsmart you, I defeat you any way I like." Eggman laughed.

"Oh yeah? We'll see you try defeating us!" Sonic shouted and sped forward, giving the starting shot for the battle as he curled into a spin and smashed two of the robot's arms at almost the same time.

Knuckles had quickly jumped aside to dodge an amount of laser beams aiming for him. Now he ducked behind a rock for shelter and tried to think of a good way to fight back without risking his neck the whoever-knows-how-often time today.

Sonic waved at the robot. "Huhu, Eggy, here I am!" The robot turned away from the rock the echidna was sitting behind and aimed for Sonic now. The two left weapon arms opened fire at the blue hedgehog and machine gun shots and laser beams cut through the air of the cave. Sonic was dodging them easily, jumping around as fast as he could to confuse the robots aiming system. Knuckles, watching the hedgehog's attempts, was already beginning to get dizzy just by the looks of the blue blur's fast movements.

Getting ever faster, Sonic was now running up the walls of the tunnel like if they were a skater chute, turning around and running the other way when he neared the ceiling. The robot's shots missed on the hedgehog, instead they hit the walls, floor and ceiling and the lasers left black burns on the rocks.

Suddenly, a piece of the ceiling couldn't stand the attack any longer and a few stones fell down to the floor. One of them hit the unprepared hedgehog on the head, and for a few seconds Sonic's vision was filled with colourful stars. He tumbled to the floor and shook his head slowly to clear his vision again.

When he managed and looked up, his eyes widened in shock. The giant robot was standing right beside, or better, above him; one of its arms lifted into the air, prepared to do an all-mighty punch downwards and crush the blue hedgehog below. "Sonic, look out," he heard Knuckles shouting. But it was too late, stunned in place Sonic couldn't move to get away; he raised his arms to cover his head and squeezed both eyes tightly shut, preparing for being smashed.

But the expected pain never came. Instead, Sonic felt being grabbed around the waist and then flying around, crashing on the rocky ground seconds later. He noticed the hard grip loosen and opened his eyes. Knuckles grinned at him. "Man, Sonic, that was close."

"It was more than close. I thought I was going to be flattened for sure. Thanks Knuckles! I guess you saved my life."

The echidna smiled. "Just returning the favor, Sonic."

The blue hedgehog smiled back and looked back at the robot. The machine had turned around and in that moment it opened fire at the two friends again. Sonic jumped to the left, Knuckles to the right and the laser beams burned a black sign of destruction on the brown wall.

"Sonic!", Knuckles shouted over at the hedgehog, dodging another attack by leaping up to the ceiling, gripping in a small hole in it and swinging a few times.

"What?", the blue hedgehog replied while busting a small missile with his spin attack.

Knuckles let himself fall back to the ground. "We need a strategy! There is no way for us to destroy that thing and free Tails, if we always just run around being shot at!" The red echidna had to jump aside again and the missile that had been aiming for him disappeared in the darkness of the tunnel behind him.

"Okay," Sonic shouted back, "I suggest you distract him and I get Tails out of that glass cube!" He threw himself to the floor and the machine gun fire just hit the wall another time.

"Could work, but the glass seems pretty solid and thick to me. Sure you can shatter it?", Knuckles answered, the next moment smashing a small missile that passed him with a punch of his fist. Falling apart, the projectile fell to the ground.

"I've seen that to, I will need all the speed I can get. Think you can give me a few seconds for a run-up?" Sonic had to jump behind a group of big rocks in order to prevent being toasted by the lasers.

Knuckles nodded over at him. "I think I can manage. Wait until he's in the right position and then give him your best shot!"

Sonic nodded back and watched Knuckles running at the robot now. The echidna had only made half of his way to the war machine when he had to leap behind a rock again. Sonic saw Knuckles picking up a stone almost as big as his fist and then he threw it at the machine. The echidna had aimed his throw exactly; the stone smashed the lower weapon arm of the robot, the one with the missiles and guns. Knuckles grinned when the robotic limb he had hit caught fire and set off the explosives it held. He ran forwards again and half around the robot, forcing it to turn around to him.

Now the robot stood perfectly in the position Sonic needed him to stand. The hedgehog tilted his head, trying to guess the distance to his goal and calculate his run-up. Then he started running, in one bound accelerating as fast as he could and sped towards the robot, his eyes focussed on the glass cage Tails was locked in. Sonic reached his full speed and leaped up and into a spin, the outer tips of his spikes meeting the glass the same instant.

Knuckles was busily trying to keep the robot occupied and not being shot in the same time, when he heard a familiar bang being thrown back to him by the cave's walls. Less than a second after that bang, a tinkling sound of glass proved that the hedgehog had been successful in his attempt to shatter Tails' cage.

Knuckles looked at the robot, for a moment wondering what was different now, until he noticed that the machine had stopped shooting at him. Sonic's attack had to have done some kind of more damage; the robot was smoking and by the looks of the machine, Knuckles' instincts knew reflexively what to do. The red echidna turned around and ran away as fast as he could, around a turn of the tunnel and threw himself to the ground, covering his head with his hands. Only a second later a shockwave pressed him down to the floor when the robot exploded.

Knuckles needed a moment to catch his breath until he crawled to his feet again and looked around, searching for his friends. "Sonic? Where are you?", he shouted.

"Along, Knux, over here!", the hedgehog answered out of the darkness not far away.

Knuckles recovered his flashlight and waved in direction of Sonic's voice, and the shine hit the hedgehog's blue spikes picking out behind a group of big rocks. Knuckles ran over and jumped up on one of the stones to look down to him.

Sonic was still half leaning over Tails, having covered his young friend with his body against the explosion.

"Hey, you two okay?", the echidna asked and jumped down to join them.

Sonic stood up and gave him a thumbs-up. Tails crawled to his feet and shook the dust and dirt out of the fur of his twin tails. He nodded. "I'm fine. Thanks for the rescue, guys." He smiled happily and hugged Sonic that tightly that the blue hedgehog had to gasp for breath.

"Hey, no problem, little bro. You didn't think I would let you down, did you?" He grinned at the fox, patting his head, knowing that the kid had more faith in him than anyone else, maybe even more than he himself had.

Tails looked up to Sonic's eyes. "Of course not. You never let me down and I'm sure you won't let me down anytime. Never!" He grinned, then he turned to Knuckles. "Thank you for coming, Knuckles!" The little fox hugged the echidna and Sonic couldn't hide a broad grin when Knuckles looked completely astonished and abashed, but then the echidna smiled hesitantly and returned the kid's hug.

Then the fox looked back to where they had come from. "What happened to Eggman?", he asked.

Sonic shrugged. "No idea. Let's go and have a look!"


	5. Chapter 5: Volcanic Problems

**Volcanic Problems**

Knuckles' flashlight showed them a picture like on a battlefield. The floor was covered with projectiles of different sizes; the walls showed long black lines of laser burns and in the middle of the cave the former robot was lying, or at least that what was left of it after the explosion. An amount of smoking metal and plastic. The cave looked like a huge war had taken place in it.

Sonic had climbed up the remainings of a former weapon arm and was now clinging to the part of it that had been a rocket launcher a few minutes ago. From up there, he could overview the mountain of rubbish. He shouted down to his two friends. "The Egg-O-Matic is gone!"

"It is really destroyed?", Knuckles yelled back, frowning disbelievingly.

Sonic jumped back down to the ground. He didn't want to have to yell all the time. Stepping at Knuckles' side, he shook his head. "No, I said it's gone, not it's busted. Eggman escaped."

Tails grabbed one of his namesakes with both hands, his fingers running over his fur thoughtfully. "I'm not sure," he said, "but I think he was already gone when you carried me away Sonic, after you smashed the robot."

"Are you sure?", Sonic asked the fox.

Tails nodded. "Maybe he knew he was on the way to lose and thought it's better to escape as long as he still could." The fox shrugged, showing that he wasn't completely convinced about his own theory.

Sonic crossed his arms on his chest and opened his mouth to say something, but closed it again. His gaze had followed Knuckles, who had climbed up the rest of the robot and was now standing on the top of the hill of crap, on the remainings of the head. He had stooped there, staring on the metal rubbish to his feet, motionless.

"Knuckles? You alright up there?", Sonic shouted at the echidna. He didn't get an answer. "Hello? Mobius to echidna, Knuckles, what's up?" Sonic exchanged a confused glance with Tails, the fox shrugged, as puzzled as Sonic was.

The hedgehog began climbing up the busted robot again, followed by the fox, who used his twin tails to fly at Sonic's side. By the time the two reached the top, Knuckles was still staring at the space between his toes, his face expressionless, like if deep in thoughts or daydreaming. Sonic waved his hand in front of the echidna's eyes and Knuckles shook his head and looked at the hedgehog. "What?"

Sonic tilted his head to one side and crossed his arms again. "I was about to ask you the same question."

"We were discussing where and when Eggman escaped," Tails added, "but you didn't say anything, you just stared on your shoes."

"What's wrong, Knuckles? Are you okay?", Sonic asked, looking a bit worried. Had Knuckles been injured in the fight? Or something else?

Knuckles' head made a movement that could be both nod or shaking, or none of them. "I wanted to look out for him myself, but when I came here, I sensed something and tried to concentrate on it."

Sonic raised his eyebrows at the echidna. "You sensed something? What?"

Knuckles just said two words, but they electrified Sonic like no other could. "Chaos Energy."

Sonic looked confused, but he didn't doubt Knuckles' feeling. He had a sharp sense for the Emeralds. "Chaos Energy? But here is no Emerald. Or at least I can't see it. And if it would be nearby I would sense it too."

"They are no longer here," the echidna gave back, "but they were here. I just know it."

"They?", Tails asked. "How do you know how many there are?"

"The feeling was a lot too strong for only one. Now it's gone, the Emeralds left this place." Knuckles turned back to Sonic. "You remember the weird stuff I dreamed in the workshop?"

The hedgehog nodded shortly. "Of course."

"All seven Emeralds are close together and they are in danger." Knuckles paused and looked into the darkness of the tunnel Eggman must have left through. "And now we know in which danger. Eggman has got them."

Sonic whistled through his teeth. "Well that's a problem than."

"We have to follow him and take them back!" Tails pointed forwards.

"Right," Sonic nodded, "I don't have any idea what he wants to do with them in this weird place, but I don't really plan to find out."

"Can't be something good," Knuckles growled.

Sonic was already jumping down the metal hill again. "Come on, guys, we gotta speed!"

"Yeah, we have to get the Emeralds back!" Knuckles followed the blue hedgehog.

"Hey, wait for me!" Tails whirled his two tails and flew down, following his friends.

* * *

Sonic reduced his speed to match his friends. Looking around in the tunnel they ran through, he noticed the air in it wasn't cool as in the caves they've entered the mountain through; it was warm, like if the inhabitants of the place had switched on the heating.

The friends had to stop often to orientate themselves in the tunnels; they passed intersections almost every two or three minutes and it appeared hard work not to get lost in this labyrinth of caves, small chambers and tunnels of different sizes. The pursuit of Eggman in this mess of possible ways would have been completely impossible if the mad scientist hadn't taken the Emeralds with him; but so, now that they were closing in on him a little, Knuckles could follow the slight feeling of the Chaos Energy.

Sonic stopped abruptly when he entered a new cave. Knuckles and Tails couldn't slow down fast enough and crashed into the hedgehog, all three of them falling to the floor.

"Man, Sonic, can't you say something when you plan to make a stop that suddenly," the echidna complained, crawling to his feet again. He stopped talking when he saw what had forced the hedgehog to brake, staring at it as puzzled as Sonic still did. Tails was kneeling on the ground as he had landed; his blue eyes wide and his jaw had dropped slightly. He had forgotten to stand up and stared disbelievingly in the same direction as his two friends.

The cave in front of them wasn't lying in darkness like all the ones hey had been in before, it was enlightened by a soft warm orange glow, emitted by a river that winded through the cave, entering it through one tunnel on the right side of it and leaving it through another tunnel at the end of the room. But it was no ordinary river, instead of water it was filled with lava. Hot boiling liquid stones from the centre of the planet.

Sonic was the first one to regain his speech. "Wow, jumping into rivers never was a hobby to me, but this one gives me more than one good reason not to try a bath!"

Tails still stared at the river, ignoring Sonic's try to make a joke. "That makes clear why it is that hot in this place."

Sonic nodded. "You sure can call the place nice and warm." He felt the warmth like Tails did, but it wasn't really uncomfortable, it was more like being in a nice living room near the fireplace in the winter.

Sonic turned to the echidna. Knuckles was looking around in the cave. "Which way, Knux?" The red echidna pointed forwards to the exit on the other side of the room without hesitating. "I think we're closing in," he said.

Sonic gave him a nod. "Good, let's get going. We have to – ".

The hedgehog stopped mid-sentence. His eyes had caught a movement in the tunnel right-hand to him. Sonic whirled around, noticing his friends doing the same. Then he found himself speechless the second time in less than five minutes. He could just stand and stare at the one who had just entered the cave.

He was obviously a lizard of some sort, his scales twinkling a little in the dim light. A line of spikes followed the creature's spine and the short tail. His big, orange and green coloured head had a real lack of ears. The gaze of the cold eyes was like steel, focussed on Sonic and his friends. In his hand he carried a long stick or spear. He was about one head taller than the blue hedgehog was.

Sonic exchanged a short glance with Knuckles. The echidna had recognized the newcomer as fast as Sonic had, both remembering the picture in Knuckles' old book on Angel Island. An otonga. _But … aren't they extinct?_

The otonga stopped a few meters away from them. Sonic felt Tails hiding behind his back and had to admit he didn't like the stabbing stare of the lizard's eyes either. "It's okay Tails," he whispered to comfort the little fox without taking his eyes off the otonga.

"Intruders! Who dares to enter the sacred centre of the great otonga empire?" His deep voice didn't even try to hide the hostility. The otonga stabbed his spear into the ground in front of his toes and a flame appeared out of nowhere, ran over the rocky ground and vanished only a few inches away from Sonic's feet. The hedgehog gasped. What damn kind of conjuring trick was that?

"Who sent you creeps here?", the lizard demanded to know.

"Well, " Sonic cleared his throat, "no one sent us," he began, although this wasn't entirely the truth. Eggman had sent them, but explaining the whole story to the guy over here seemed to be useless to Sonic. In fact, the hedgehog was sure he wouldn't believe him anyway. "We came here in pursuit of an enemy of ours, who had taken our little friend here hostage. We just came to free him." In the moment the words left his mouth Sonic knew the otonga didn't believe a single letter of it.

The lizard waved his spear at Sonic, and Tails behind his back ducked a little more. "Shut up! Echidnas, stupid and naïve as they always were."

"Hey," Sonic intervened, "I'm not an echidna, I'm a hedgehog. Sonic the Hedgehog!"

The otonga shrugged. "Hedgehog? It doesn't matter, small spiky mammals! I can see you are in cahoots with the echidnas, maybe they have recruited other inferior creatures as foot soldiers."

Sonic opened his mouth to answer in spite of having no idea what to say to convince the otonga. But he didn't need to. The lizard had yet turned to Knuckles, who had clenched his spiky fists angrily at the way the otonga talked about his people.

"But you are an echidna," the green and orange lizard said unnecessarily, regarding Knuckles in a way as if looking down on a small bug, deciding whether to crunch it with one toe or not.

Knuckles stared back, his gaze not less hostile. The red echidna didn't like to be treated like that and he didn't like anything about the otonga. Now that he really met one, Knuckles knew exactly why this tribe and his own people had been enemies. But maybe it wasn't fair judging all otongas as hostile just because one particular member of that species was.

"What's your name, echidna, and who are you?", the otonga asked, still staring into Knuckles' eyes as if he wanted to stab him with his gaze.

Knuckles' deep voice was calm and nearly relaxed when he answered, still returning the gaze, determined not to be the first one to look away. Sonic admired his friend's self-control. "My name is Knuckles and I'm the guardian of the sacred Master Emerald."

Sonic sighed inwardly. Obviously Knuckles had decided that telling the otonga he was the last of his kind wasn't a good idea at the time.

The otonga gave an odd laughter. "Guardian? You are kidding me, echidna. I have seen some other echidnas in my long life and I know your maturity rate. And I know for sure that you," he pointed the spear at Knuckles, "are merely a teenager. You can be a young warrior on his first attempts to gain reputation and honour, but guardian? Ha!"

Knuckles lifted one of his fists. "I really am the guardian, how will you judge about that, you don't know me!"

Sonic nodded at the otonga. "Knuckles is telling the truth, he really is the guardian."

The lizard stared from Knuckles to Sonic and back again. "Allright, then be the guardian. Your duty is of no importance to mine, none of you tiny creeps is of any consequence to me. I'm the last of my great people and the ruler in this place." He smirked as is he was thinking about something amusing. "And besides, if you are the guardian, echidna, there is one thing we have in common. I'm a guardian too, the guardian of the sacred mountain and the controller of the forces of the volcano." He raised his nose at the ceiling in pride.

Sonic couldn't stay serious to the otonga's arrogance. "I'm impressed," he grinned. "But you don't really do a very good job then. You missed on Eggman."

The otonga stepped closer to Sonic, stabbing his gaze into the hedgehog's eyes again. "I told you I don't believe your stupid lies, so stop storytelling, you chaos freaks."

Sonic regarded him in astonishment. "Chaos freaks?"

"Why do you call us chaos freaks?", Knuckles asked too.

"You are an echidna and all echidnas are bound to the powers of Chaos. And you, hedgehog," he turned to Sonic, "your eyes are shining in emerald green. You are one who can use their power. I can see the chaos in both of you." The otonga stared at Knuckles and Sonic, ignoring the little fox still hiding behind the blue hedgehog's back, scared by the lizard's behaviour. Evidently the otonga considered the kid as absolutely unimportant for him. At least that provided a bit of safety for Tails, or Sonic hoped it would.

The lizard continued talking. "I haven't seen any chaos creatures for a long time, for more than 300 hundred years I guess." The otonga paused, giving Sonic enough time to wonder how old he might be, if he really could remember having seen echidnas 300 years ago.

The lizard continued. "But now you came. And I still demand to know why."

Sonic shrugged. "I told you that before. We tried to rescue our fox friend here and take the Chaos Emeralds back from our enemy Dr. Eggman."

Knuckles shot Sonic a sharp glance, he shouldn't have mentioned the Emeralds were here.

The blue hedgehog knew himself that talking about the Chaos Emeralds to this guy could be risky, but he wanted to know the otonga's reaction to it. Watching him sharply, he wasn't disappointed.

The lizard tumbled a few steps backwards and stared at Sonic awkwardly. "The seven Chaos Emeralds are here?", he whispered.

Sonic and Knuckles exchanged a confused look. Sure, Sonic had reckoned with some sort of reaction but this one… The otonga was looking truly shocked.

The hedgehog shrugged, trying to keep his voice casually low. "I just said so; we came here to get them back."

"The seven Chaos Emeralds are here," the otonga murmured again.

"You repeat yourself," Sonic said, clearly not knowing what to make of the otonga's strange reaction.

"So the prophecies are finally becoming true," the lizard said silently, ignoring the hedgehog's interference completely. Sonic wasn't sure if he had even noticed him. "This is the day, the final day. Chaos and Order are coming together and the last debts are to be paid." He pushed his spear into the ground, creating a small red flame. He stared at it a moment and when he looked up again to Sonic and his friends, he had clearly pulled himself together. His voice was calm and Sonic didn't like the fanatic sparkling in his eyes. "Tomorrow, you chaos freaks, only one of us will be left. Only one power to make up the world and it will be balanced again, after thousands of years both Order and Chaos existed; now one will vanish forever." He broke into a hysterical, maniacal laughter.

"What is that supposed to mean?", Knuckles regarded the otonga suspiciously. He didn't understand everything the lizard had said, but a lot sounded remotely familiar to the stuff they had read on Angel Island about these otongas and their order-philosophy. And Knuckles didn't like the way the otonga looked at them when he spoke about whatever prophecy he thought was now to be fulfilled. The uncomfortable feeling of danger had retuned to Knuckles.

"Why will only one be left tomorrow?", Sonic asked, his look as worried as Knuckles' was.

"Find out for yourselves, you stupid fools! I have to send the lava creature for the Emeralds. I've been waiting a long time for this to happen. I will fulfil my destiny and my sacred last task." He raised his spear and a large red flame rocketed to the ceiling. Then the otonga turned around, without dignifying the three 'intruders' with a single glance, and left the cave through the tunnel he had come in through a few minutes ago.

"We have to follow him!", Knuckles shouted and pointed at the tunnel in which the mysterious lizard had vanished. "He's up to something dangerous. We have to stop him."

"I know," Sonic agreed, "but we also have to go after Eggman. He still has the Emeralds and I'm sure he plans to do something dangerous too."

"Sonic is right," Tails said, it was the first word the kid had spoken since the otonga had appeared. "We can't let Dr. Eggman get away with them."

Knuckles nodded, looking from one exit of the cave to the other, struggling to make a decision. "Sonic, I think he knows…", the echidna began, hesitating. Then he continued. "He's doing something dangerous. I know." He looked at Sonic.

The hedgehog nodded understandingly. "Okay, we have two enemies to take care of, we can't let one of them get away. We have to split up," he decided. "Tails and I go after Eggman and the Emeralds; you stop this otonga guy from whatever he plans to do."

The echidna nodded, confirming the hedgehog's plan and turned to run after the otonga.

"And, Knuckles?", Sonic said, forcing the addressed echidna to stop and turn to him. "Be careful." Knuckles nodded briefly, hearing the unspoken support in Sonic's tone. The echidna turned again and left his two friends.

Sonic turned to Tails. "Ready, little bro? We have a mad Egghead to catch!"

The fox smiled. "If you're up for it, I'm up for it! Let's go and get the Emeralds back!"

"Yep, as you say!" Sonic ran over at the exit on the end of the cave and Tails followed flying.

* * *

The tunnel they entered was bigger than all the others they had been in before. The two friends could see well in the tunnel because the path winded along the lava river, whose glow dowsed the cave with a dim light.

Without Knuckles to tell them where the Emeralds were Sonic had doubted that they would be successful in their pursuit of Eggman, but it appeared they were lucky. The tunnel was long and minutes passed without intersections with other tunnels. It was easy to know which way to take, there was one way to go.

"Hey Sonic, do you think we'll catch up with Eggman?", Tails' question came from Sonic's side.

The hedgehog turned to the fox without slowing. "I'm sure we will. He can't be far."

A few minutes later, as if to prove Sonic's words, the tunnel opened to a huge cave. The hedgehog and the fox stopped to take a short overview.

Sonic and Tails were standing at a small sort of hill. Right-hand, the river of lava winded through the cave below. A huge cave, the ceiling was high like in a dome. The large room was enlightened not only by the dim glow of the river, but by an amount of torches on the walls. Several tunnels led into the cave, Sonic could see the entrances as dark holes in the walls.

In the middle of the cave, Eggman was hovering in his strange vehicle, a few meters away from something that caught both Sonic and Tails breathless. It was obviously some sort of monster. A very big and a positively ugly one. Sonic guessed, just by the looks of it, that it couldn't walk through the tunnel they had come through.

The creature's huge body seemed to be half liquid, half solid and it was evidently on fire. Flames licked on the massive head and Sonic knew without asking what it consisted of. Lava. A volcanic beast. The otonga guy had talked about a lava creature he wanted to send after the Emeralds, but Sonic hadn't really taken him serious. Now the hedgehog wished he better had, but it wouldn't have changed anything.

The beast was standing, or lying, it was difficult to define that for certain, perfectly still, the huge ugly eyes, or something very similar to eyes, focussed on Dr. Eggman.

"What is it doing, Sonic?", Tails asked his friend, and Sonic wondered with a look on the fox' face that Tails seemed to be more fascinated than scared.

"I don't know," Sonic replied, watching the scene beneath them.

Whatever the monster was up to, it wasn't going to eat Eggman or something like that. It didn't really look hostile towards the scientist in his flying vehicle and Eggman's behaviour was to calm to be threatened. Now, the madman raised one arm and spoke up, the tone of his voice like if he wanted to do a magic spell or some kind of swearing to the creature. "Alopi kiuzt deeopta swergot jumokas!"

Sonic and Tails exchanged a glance of puzzled confusion. What was that?

Although the words Eggman had said seemed to be complete nonsense to the two observers, the strange lava beast seemed to understand him. It made a movement that reminded Sonic of kneeling down somehow and lowered its ugly head.

"Sonic, it's obeying him," Tails whispered, puzzled of how Eggman could know these words.

"Yeah, I can see that too. He told us he knew what to do inside this mountain, but none of us took that serious. Looks like that was a mistake." Sonic clenched his fist in frustration.

Down at the bottom of the cave, Eggman had turned in his vehicle for some reason, it didn't really matter why. What mattered was that he spotted Sonic and Tails. He laughed and waved at his enemies. "Ah, Sonic, I see you finally found me. But once again," he grinned broadly, "you are too late to stop me."

"Oh yeah, we'll see about that in the end, Eggman," Sonic shouted down to his arch enemy, beginning to walk down the hill to the cave below, watching the lava monster from one corner of his eyes. "Where are the Chaos Emeralds?"

Eggman gave a short laugh and reached down to pull two bags out of his vehicle. "I'm keeping them safe and sound here." He opened the bags to show the magical gems at Sonic. Three of them in the first and four in the second bag.

_He's keeping them separated_, Sonic realized, _to avoid chaos effects_. "What do you plan to do with them?"

"Give them back, they don't belong to you!", Tails shouted furiously at Dr. Eggman.

The weird doctor grinned oddly. "Sorry I can't do you that favor, little fox. I need them." He turned to Sonic. "They will be the perfect mean to establish my empire."

Sonic's eyes narrowed. "Not if I can help it!"

"Don't you dare to give it a try, hedgehog. The lava creature is under my command now; it will only follow my orders. It is the perfect weapon. It will destroy your precious planet and on the remaining ruins of Mobius, I will found the Eggman Empire! Finally I will reach my aim of world domination. Hahahaha!"

Sonic ignored Eggman's laughter. "Give me the Emeralds or I'm coming and taking them from you!", he shouted angrily.

Dr. Eggman held the two bags up and grinned at the blue hedgehog. "You can't, you are too late, Sonic."

"Eggman!", Sonic shouted again, his muscles braced to launch himself at his nemesis.

The weird scientist turned to the monster, ignoring the hedgehog. "Come on, my hot friend," Eggman addressed the huge lava creature, "take them and do as you were ordered. Bring them away to become a mean of destruction!"

Laughing manically, Eggman threw the two bags that contained the seven Chaos Emeralds at the creature. To Sonic's shock, it grabbed them, each with one hand and roared aloud. Laughter and roar were reflected by the cave's walls and echoed through the uncountable number of tunnels, returning thousand times to reach Sonic's ears like a shockwave. Together with the imagination of what that beast would do with the Emeralds, it was giving Sonic the creeps. Tails standing at his side seemed to feel the same way, he was shivering.

Eggman flew down a little in his Egg-O-Matic, looking at fox and hedgehog, his grin one of pure gloating satisfaction. "You'll never stop me now, Sonic. In a few hours, you will be destroyed; all of you pesky creeps will be destroyed. You are all doomed, Mobius is doomed! Hahahaaha"

"I've heard that before Eggman. Why do you think I can't stop you this time like I always did before?" Sonic had clenched his first tightly and his eyes had narrowed, the tone of his voice expressed his determination to do all he could to stop Eggman's plans.

"Since there is no way for you to interfere with my plans this time, I'm going to tell you. Of course I won't tell you everything, that appears useless to me and besides, I don't have time for that." He paused, maybe to increase the suspense, but Sonic wasn't sure about it. "The lava monster was created thousands of years ago by the ancient otongas, as a protection against other tribes. They used it at a weapon to bring destruction among their enemies." He paused to look over at the creature, which was still standing there. It seemed to wait somehow. "It won't use the Emeralds' power itself. It's made to be Order, not Chaos, and Chaos and Order exclude each other. It will use their power to unleash a never known destruction, when it carries out orders older than Knuckles' Floating Island." He grinned at the echidna, who had just entered the cave through a small tunnel on the left and was now trying to understand what was going on.

Eggman's grin broadened and he continued. "Sorry I must leave you now, but I have to be far away from here soon. I have to apologize, I will miss on you deaths." He laughed again. Then he waved at the creature. "Do what you were told to. Ekonktwago!"

Before Sonic or his friends could ask what 'Ekonktwago' was supposed to mean, Eggman had already left.

The lava creature roared again and turned around to leave the cave through a tunnel on its end.

"You won't get away with the Emeralds!", Sonic shouted at it and accelerated. He reached his full speed halfway to the monster and jumped up to curl into a spin and hit the beast with all the power he could put into his spin attack. He wouldn't let it take the Emeralds to destroy the planet without a fight!

The impact was hard, like nothing he ever hit before, and he had used his spin attack on nearly everything he could think of. Normally, Sonic's spin cut through almost every material, so that the hedgehog smashed through it. This time it didn't work anyway. The creature's monstrous body was somehow elastic and solid at the same time, and the power of Sonic's speedy spin was not exactly absorbed, but instead of hurting the creature, the force of Sonic's attack came back to him. The spinning hedgehog felt how he was bounced back and he realized that they needed to have much more power to harm this thing.

Unfortunately, Sonic had no time to think about this. He crashed against something hard and blackness exploded behind his eyes.


	6. Chapter 6: An Ancient Threat

**An Ancient Threat **

Pain.

Much Pain. Right now it was all that existed.

A dull pounding, enhancing with every second, with every heart beat sending a fresh wave of pain through Sonic's head.

Stars pinwheeled in front of his vision, colourful blurs and crazy whirls tumbled through his mind. His ears seemed to have gotten completely useless; all he heard were the endless explosions in his head, when his heart pumped a new wave of blood through it.

Sonic didn't really notice it, but he groaned quietly. Something touched his head, causing the pain to increase to big bang level, before some natural survival instincts obviously decided this state he was in was a useless condition of suffering and Sonic passed out again.

* * *

When Sonic came to, he was lying on his back on some rocky ground, but the rock wasn't cold as stones usually were, it was almost comfortably warm.

The headache had decreased to a dull pounding; it had stopped to feel as if thousands of rock bands were having a percussion sound check in it, jointed by the global congress of pyrotechnicians testing their dynamite. Sonic was able to think, what really could be called an advantage to the last time he woke up.

The next thing the hedgehog realized was that he wasn't alone. His instincts told him that almost immediately; they had been sharpened in years of fighting. Friends or enemies? None of them was saying anything, so Sonic decided to make use of his other regained senses and first of all, he opened his eyes. They showed him the picture of a rocky ceiling, shadows crawling across it, dancing with orange, warm light. _Torchlight_, Sonic thought.

Then the picture changed and Tails' worried face leaned over him. Sonic took a relieved breath. Friends, and as it seemed, Tails was okay. "Sonic?", the young fox asked. "Can you hear me?"

"Yeah, 'course I can."

The fox sighed in relief. "We were beginning to worry you'd never wake up."

Sonic sat up slowly and gasped as a fresh painful wave flooded his head caused by the sudden movement, but after a short moment it began to abate and Sonic looked around. It was anoether cave, enlightened by several torches at the walls. The furniture consisted of some huge kind of table in the middle of the room and many rocky benches. On one of them he was sitting now.

Knuckles was leaning on the edge of the table thing and looked at Sonic. "Hey, good thing you're finally with us again. How are you feeling?"

"My head hurts and I'm feeling slightly dazed, but I guess I'll come through. How long have I been out?"

"A little more than two hours," Tails answered.

"Two hours? That's much longer than I expected," Sonic admitted irritatedly.

"If I were you, I wouldn't wonder about it." Knuckles raised his eyebrows and Sonic wasn't really sure what to make of that. "You crashed into this thing at super sonic speed and your spin attack was bounced back only two meters."

"The impact in the creature absorbed all your kinetic energy," Tails continued Knuckles' explanations, "Energy that came all back down on your head. You're more than lucky you even survived that."

Knuckles again. "As far as I can judge from an examination two hours ago, you won't even have a real concussion. Your spin seems to be an efficient protection after all. The headache will go away in an hour or so."

Sonic looked at the echidna, not completely convinced about that. He knew Knuckles had a lot of knowledge about injuries like this one, much more than Sonic himself. But it wasn't Knuckles' head, was it? "Where are we?", Sonic tried to change the subject.

"It's some kind of control room," Tails explained. "Knuckles found it when he followed the guardian of the volcano. We found a map of the place, or that's at least what we think it is."

"We wanted to use it to find out where the lava monster brought the Chaos Emeralds and what it plans to do with them, because as Eggman said, it can't use their energy itself. I'm not sure if he has been lying to us about that or not. But it doesn't make a real difference at the time." Knuckles stopped.

"And?", Sonic demanded to know impatiently. "Have you discovered the place? You've had plenty of time while I was lying around here unconscious."

Knuckles shrugged. "There's a problem."

"Huh?"

"We don't understand the map." The echidna was looking a little abashed at Sonic.

The hedgehog stood up and walked over to Knuckles and the table, carefully rubbing his sore head. Knuckles ignored it and it was one of the moments in which Sonic was glad Knuckles had a stronger sense of honour than most other people he knew, so that the echidna seemed to understand that Sonic didn't want to talk about it.

Instead, Knuckles pointed at a piece of paper, or something very similar to paper, Sonic couldn't define the material for sure that was stretched out across the big table.

Sonic looked down on it and knew what problem the others had had. It wasn't exactly what Sonic would have called a useful plan or guide; in fact, it looked like somebody on crazy drugs had been trying to draw a picture of his brain structure and completely messed it up. The 'map' was a weird chaos of lines, circles, stripes and arrows. Several strange symbols had been added to this mess, maybe some kind of explanations.

"Wow, that's not really helpful, I guess." Sonic grinned. "And I thought those guys loved order. This can be called everything else, but not _order_!"

Knuckles' finger pointed at some of the symbols. "It looks like these are symbols or hieroglyphs of some sort of ancient language. The map might be understandable if we knew their meaning." He paused.

"But we don't, am I right? Even you don't have any clue Knux, have you?" Sonic's expression made clear he already knew the answer.

Knuckles shrugged. "I've never seen anything like it. I know a lot ancient dialects, but these – Sorry Sonic…"

"No prob, Knux, we'll get behind it." _We have_ _to_, Sonic added in thoughts.

"Maybe if I can fix this computer, we can find a translation of their language to another one, one that Knuckles knows." Tails' arm pointed at a strange machine on one of the walls. Sonic hadn't really looked at it until Tails mentioned the thing. Now, Sonic could see a screen and something similar to a keyboard.

"You think you can make it work?"

"I'm not exactly sure, but if I override the main circuits and add a few transistors, so that…", the young fox stopped talking and began to giggle as he looked in the faces of his two friends. Neither Sonic nor Knuckles had understood what Tails had been trying to explain. "Sorry guys, I didn't mean to –"

His words were cut off by Sonic. "It's not important that we understand, if you think it will work, do it."

"And can you try to do it a little faster than the last two hours, Tails? Sitting around here looking at you crawling around under and inside this computer, I feel useless." For a few seconds Knuckles looked so desperate to be helpless that Sonic broke into laughter.

"Okay, I'll try my best. But it's complicated stuff, you know?" Without waiting for an answer, the two tailed fox turned around. He pulled out a screwdriver and disappeared under the computer desk.

Sonic sat down on the table where Knuckles had been sitting. Now the echidna had stood up and left the cave through one of the five exits, without saying where he was going, only to return less than one minute later. In his right hand, he was carrying a big glass of water, again leaving out any comment on where he had gotten it from.

He stepped right in front of Sonic, who was still sitting on the table, and waved it at the hedgehog's face. "Drink that," he commanded.

Sonic had to admit he was thirsty and grabbed the glass. But even before he had taken the first sip, his nose wrinkled in distaste and he frowned at the echidna. "Geez, Knuckles, that stuff smells horrible! What is that? You are not trying to poison me with a new creation of 'rotten egg lemonade', are you?"

"We don't have other water, as far as you hadn't noticed yet, we're still inside the volcano. The smell is caused by a lot of sulphur in it. Don't worry, it's not dangerous. I've been trying it myself a few hours ago, and as you see, I'm still alive and I'm not sick. It's not too bad as long as you don't concentrate on the bitter aftertaste. Maybe all the volcanic minerals in it are even healthy." The echidna sighed when he saw Sonic still frowning. "Look, Sonic, you really need to drink something. When was the last time you had a drink? This morning on the island?"

"Mind you own business, Knux! I can take care of myself!"

The echidna shrugged. "If you don't drink it on purpose, I'm going to make you drink it. The last thing we need is you suffering from dehydration in this hot place."

Sonic clenched his fists and Knuckles noticed his eyes narrowing angrily. The echidna decided to use his last argument to convince Sonic. "You know, hedgehog, somebody said to me something about accepting help. Being able to take care of yourself doesn't mean you can't take help if it's offert. Sound's familiar to you?" Knuckles grinned looking a little gloating now.

Sonic stared at the echidna, momentarily speechless about the fact that Knuckles was turning his own weapons against him. Sonic could feel himself blush and he was more than happy that Tails was still crawling around under the desk and couldn't see his face turning nearly as red as Knuckles' fur. "Okay," he gave in quietly, "this round is yours, Knuckles."

Carefully Sonic took a small sip of the water, trying to ignore Knuckles' bright grin. Swallowing the water, Sonic shot Knuckles a glance as acidly as the water tasted. The echidna turned away, it seemed he was concentrated on the confusing lines of the map, but Sonic could hear him trying to hold back his giggling.

By the time Sonic had slowly swallowed a half glass of the water, the still dazed feeling in his head began to decrease and he had to admit that the drink, despite the terrible taste, was incredibly refreshing. When he had finished the rest of the bitter fluid, his headache had faded almost completely. Knuckles had been right about that and Sonic didn't like that he was.

When Sonic put the now empty glass down on the table, he glanced over at Knuckles. The echidna was leaning against the table and seemed to watch Tails working underneath the computer desk. The fox had disappeared nearly completely behind the ancient machine; the only things that proved he was still there were his twin tails that waved slightly beside the desk.

Knuckles shot a sharp look at Sonic. He tried to do it secretly, but he knew the hedgehog spotted it, even as he seemed to have decided to ignore it. Knuckles turned his gaze away again, it had been short, but it had showed him enough. Sonic's emerald green eyes had cleared a lot and his face had regained its normal healthy colour. _I told you that_, _hedgehog,_ he thought, not daring to say this aloud. He knew how his own reaction would have been and he could imagine very well Sonic's reaction to it. This was one character trait the two of them had in common.

_Maybe the only one_, Knuckles thought and grinned.

* * *

Tails was still busily working on the computer. Silence filled the cave, only interrupted from time to time by metallic sounds and scratching, caused by Tails' tries to convince the ancient machine to cooperate.

Sonic and Knuckles were both sitting on the table again, side by side. A few times ago, they had tried again to get through the chaotic map, but given it up. Without explanations, it was a waste of time and energy to think about it.

Suddenly Sonic broke the silence. "Oh, I almost forgot. What happened to the otonga guy?"

Knuckles gazed away from Tails' piece of work and faced the blue hedgehog. "He's dead."

"He is what? You mean… - you killed him?" Sonic looked truly shocked.

Knuckles shook his head slowly. "No. Of course I didn't. It was an accident." He paused for a moment, then began to report. "I followed him through several caves and tunnels. He didn't realize that I was after him, or he didn't care. Finally I found him activating some sort of machine in a small chamber not far away from this one we are in now. When he spotted me, he laughed and said I was too late to stop him now. It had already begun." Knuckles' fingers ran over his long, dreadlock-like spines. "He talked about the chaos of the world being doomed now; he said he would cause destruction all over the world to bring a perfect order to it. It was weird; I didn't understand what he was talking about. I asked what he was doing and he said something about now self-fulfilling prophecies and that he would unleashed a lava creature from a sleep of more than five thousand years to the outside world now." Knuckles paused again. "He laughed about us, said we would all die soon. The otonga pointed at his machine and told me it was a bomb. He said he had forced the volcano to erupt in a few hours and when it does it would detonate the bomb and blow up the whole place. I told him to stop it or I would make him stop it myself." Knuckles shook his head. "He just laughed about me, called me a fool and pushed a button somewhere in the wall behind him. The whole machine disappeared in a flame and the otonga threw a glowing stone at me, demanding I should give it a try if I dared. We fought several minutes. During the struggle we left the chamber and continued battling each other in a tunnel with a river full of hot lava." The echidna sighed. "Somehow I suddenly stood with my back against the gulf, he ran towards me to push me in. I jumped aside and all I heard was his cry when he fell in the depth. He was burned alive." Knuckles' voice was shaking now. "I never heard anything like that yelp before and I wish never having to hear it again." The red echidna dropped his gaze, shivering slightly.

"It wasn't your fault, Knuckles," Sonic tried to comfort him, "he tried to kill you, and as you said, it was an accident."

"Of cause it was. But it was still…" He shook himself again, his long spikes hitting Sonic's back.

The hedgehog decided to draw Knuckles' attention to another matter. "What about the bomb? You really think he can make the volcano erupt and explode the whole mountain?"

"I'm certain he can," Knuckles nodded. "You remember what it said about the otongas in the text back on Angel Island? They have the power to control volcanic forces and use them as weapons."

"We weren't sure if the stories told about them destroying whole civilisations were more than legends, but I begin to believe they are more truth than fairy tale." Sonic's eyes showed a slight sign of his fear. "We have to stop it whatever it is."

"And there's not only the otonga and his volcanic bomb to worry about, or have you forgotten Eggman and the Chaos Emeralds? He gave them to that lava creature."

"Yes, I remember that," Sonic nodded, still feeling the bump on his head.

"The monster got away after it – well - knocked you out somehow; it was to fast for us to follow. Eggman said it would carry out orders. It would be helpful to know what orders for starters and –" Knuckles was cut off by Tails.

"Maybe I can help that," he said, sitting down on the bench in front of the screen. Neither Sonic nor Knuckles had noticed that the computer was working, the screen showed some symbols.

"Hey Tails, you did it!", Sonic grinned at his little foxy friend, jumping off the table and standing at the fox' side an instant later.

"Congratulations, Tails, good job." Knuckles smiled at the two tailed fox as he joined the other two in front of the rocky desk.

Tails smirked proudly and seemed to grow a little. He turned around and pointed at the screen. "These are the same signs like on the map. But look, I found others as well." He leaned forward to press a few buttons on the keyboard. Another kind of hieroglyphs appeared on the monitor. To Sonic it didn't really make a difference which sort of symbols the screen showed, none of them looked familiar to him.

But Knuckles gasped as he saw them. "Stop," he shouted. Tails stopped. Knuckles' eyes scanned the text.

"You can read this?", Sonic asked unnecessarily.

"'course, it's echidna." Knuckles replied shortly.

"Echidna?", Sonic and Tails repeated unison.

"Why do they write texts in echidna language, I thought they were arch enemies, Chaos and Order exclude each other and that stuff," Sonic wondered.

"It is some sort of translation program," Knuckles explained without turning his gaze from the text. "Maybe they thought it's sometimes useful to know your enemy, so that they collected information on my people and learned their language. I dunno." He paused and his eyes widened, staring at the symbols on the screen. "Tails?"

"Yes?"

"It asks here to translate all information into the selected language. How can I tell that thing to do it?"

Tails looked around on the keyboard and pointed at a big button. "This one is used to confirm orders, I guess."

Sonic quirked an eyebrow. "You guess? Don't you know?"

Tails shrugged. "How should I?"

"So it looks like I just have to give it a shot, ey?" Knuckles smirked and reached out to press the button.

Moments nothing happened. Then the screen turned dark.

Sonic sighed. "Great, you killed it, Knux."

Symbols reappeared on the monitor. Knuckles grinned, "I didn't."

"Did it work?", Tails demanded to know.

The echidna scanned the screen, then he nodded. The small fox jumped up happily.

Knuckles concentrated on the text. Sonic and Tails waited for him to tell them what it said. The young fox was waving his twin tails anxiously and the blue hedgehog had began tapping his foot impatiently, trying to judge what Knuckles was reading by fathoming his facial expressions.

The echidna's eyes had turned harder, his lips set tightly. He groaned. "Oh no."

"What Knuckles? Bad news?" Sonic already knew before he had opened his mouth to ask.

"It's not bad news, it's the worst news ever. This place will become a starting point for apocalypse in less than half an hour by now." The echidna sat back down on the bench heavily.

Sonic and Tails stared at him.

"You aren't kidding us, are you, Knux?" Sonic's eyes were wide open with shock.

"This is way too serious to be kidding." The red echidna took a deep breath, trying to steady his voice. "You remember we wondered about what the lava creature would do with the Emeralds? Eggman gave it an order."

"Yes, what did he say again?" Sonic shut his eyes, trying to remember. "Ekonto… Ekontao… or something like that."

"Ekonktwago," Knuckles corrected him, looking on the screen behind him for a moment. "I found out what that is."

"And? Come on Knuckles, you're killing me!", Sonic forced him to continue.

"You remember the nightmare I had yesterday? This will be worse." He paused, staring at the screen again. "Ekonktwago is an order for ultimate destruction. Apocalypse as I said. The creature will bring the Chaos Emeralds down to a chamber near to the centre of the volcano. They must be there by now. When the volcano erupts, it will detonate the bomb the guardian has activated and the explosion will combine with the power of the Chaos Emeralds. The blast will be more powerful than anything before existed." Knuckles' eyes were sparkling. Sonic could see fear and desperation in them. The hedgehog hadn't seen Knuckles being scared before very often.

The echidna continued and Sonic could hear his deep voice shake slightly. "The powers of Order and Chaos will destroy one another. The whole volcano will explode and the lava creature will be unleashed to the outside world. It will contain all the force of the volcano. Nothing will be powerful enough to defeat it then. It will destroy the planet, erase every sign of life on the surface. Eggman thought he could use it to destroy the world and build his empire on the ruins. But when the creature has finished its orders, there will be nothing left to rule over for him. If we can't stop that thing in time, I'm afraid Eggman is right," Knuckles' voice was merely a whisper now, "We are all doomed."

"No way!", Sonic shouted. "I won't let him win; I didn't lose all the times before, why should I now?"

Knuckles stared at the blue hedgehog, wondering where Sonic was taking his optimism from. "How can we?"

"What does it say will happen when only the bomb explodes, I mean without an all-mighty monster and the Chaos Emeralds to enhance the blow?" Sonic had started walking around in the cave nervously.

Knuckles turned to the screen again. He read along the lines a few moments. "I guess only the volcano will explode and erupt."

Sonic stopped walking and looked at him. "Can we stop it?"

Knuckles shook his head. "No, once the progress has begun, it can't be stopped. The volcano will erupt in any case now."

"Okay, then we have to kill the creature, take away the Emeralds and leave this nice place as fast as possible," Sonic said, as if that was a piece of cake to him.

"Great idea, Sonic," Knuckles groaned, "and how exactly were you planning to do that? This beast if to powerful for us to beat and we don't have the Master Emerald here to control the Chaos Emeralds."

Sonic grinned. "You don't need it, as long as you have me along. I don't need the Master Emerald to control them."

It took Knuckles a moment to understand. "You want to use them to transform into Super Sonic, right?"

Tails smiled at the hedgehog. "That's great, if you have the Emeralds the lava thing can't use them and you are powerful enough to defeat it."

Knuckles could discern the risk of Sonic's plan much better than the young fox could. The echidna looked down on Tails; maybe it was good that he didn't know how dangerous Sonic's idea was. It was enough that he and the hedgehog were worried; they didn't need to bother Tails.

"You know how risky that is, don't you? We don't have any idea what happens if your Chaos Energy as Super Sonic comes into contact with that monster. It's order, and Order and Chaos are like opposite poles of a magnetic stone. You could die, you know that? This is not some game we're playing in now, Sonic."

The hedgehog's eyes met Knuckles' and it was as if the echidna could see through them right into Sonic's soul. "I know that Knuckles," he said quietly. "But it is the only possible thing to do, you know that as good as I do." Sonic's eyes were completely calm, his voice as relaxed as if he was talking about the weather. Knuckles had seen that expression in Sonic's face before and he somehow knew he could trust him. The echidna looked down on Tails again. The young fox was glancing up at the hedgehog as if he knew Sonic could do everything. Knuckles just wished he could be as trustfully relaxed as that kid was.

The echidna nodded. "Okay, if you really want to do that, do it." He turned to the computer again, now beginning to feel Sonic's determination spread to himself. "We first need to find out where the monster is and where the Emeralds are."

Sonic and Tails watched Knuckles searching the texts on the screen. Then the red echidna pressed a button and a familiar picture appeared on the screen, a confusing pattern of lines and symbols. The map, in digital form of course. And this time with explanations in echidna language.

Knuckles pointed at a small blinking green pinprick on the map. "We are here," he explained his friends, "this is the centre of the volcano, a crater filled with boiling lava. That is were the lava beast is now. And here," he pointed his finger at a small blue point next to the crater, "are the Emeralds."

Sonic's eyes followed the lines that connected their momentary position and the crater to find the fastest way to get there. Then he nodded. "Got it. Now we need a way out of here for you two."

Knuckles nodded too. "Here, you see that? I guess it is much shorter and less dangerous than the way we came in here. There is the Tornado." He showed Sonic the right side of the map.

"Right," he said, looking at his two friends. He palmed Tails' head shortly. "You two get to the plane and away form this place as fast as you can, right big guy?"

Tails nodded.

"Bring Knuckles away in the Tornado." Sonic blinked his eyes at the fox.

"Now you can return the favour and save me, Tails," Knuckles smiled at the kid.

"Right," Tails grinned, "and you tell the big ugly monster that we don't want it to destroy our planet, Sonic!"

"Sure, you can count on me!"

Before they left, Knuckles turned to Sonic again.

"We'll meet at the mesa we saw on the way here, a few miles out in the plains. Remember it?" Sonic asked the echidna.

"Yes, we'll be there and wait for you." He paused and shook Sonic's hand. "Good luck, Sonic."

"You too. We'll make it, we always do."

The two friends exchanged a nod. Tails hugged Sonic. "Good luck, Sonic!"

"Good luck, little bro. Don't worry, everything will be okay, I promise."

Tails snatched Knuckles' hand. "Okay, Knuckles, let's go!" The two waved at Sonic as they ran down the tunnel to leave the volcano.


	7. Chapter 7: Seven Emeralds, One Chance

**Seven Emeralds, One Hedgehog And One Last Chance**

Sonic looked after his friends as they ran off. Then he turned around, his eyes narrowed in determination. He wouldn't let this happen.

"Nobody destroys the world while Sonic's on the scene", he mumbled as he raced into the opposite direction as Knuckles and Tails to get to the cave in the centre of the volcano where the seven Chaos Emeralds where waiting to become a mega bomb in a few minutes and release a monster which had been designed by the ancient owners of the volcano to destroy every sign of chaos; for it that meant civilization. Cities, villages, people. It would cause massive destruction all over the planet, leaving fear and death in his way. Sonic would never let anything like this happen. No matter what it would need to beat that creature, he had to stop it.

"And I will", he quietly said to himself as he sped down the tunnel.

* * *

After a minute Sonic felt the air getting hotter and even the floor beneath his feet was beginning to feel warm through the soles of his sneakers. The hedgehog had to concentrate on the small path he was running on. It was sometimes interrupted by deep pits of which Sonic didn't wanted to know how deep they were and what would happen to him if he fell in. Sharp stones and holes filled with boiling lava appeared suddenly in his way when he sped around another turn of the tunnel.

Sonic's blue fur was matting with sweat and the skin on his arms and chest covering with a wet film. He could feel his heart beating against his chest, his pulse was much faster than it usually was. Sonic had been born with the natural ability to run faster than the speed of sound. His body had a lot of energy and even long runs didn't exhaust the hedgehog normally.

But this time it was different. Sonic was exhausted, but not really because of the high speed running. The heat was getting stronger with every one of his fast steps as he got closer to the volcano's centre. He had to force himself to breathe in the hot air, the heat hurt in his lungs like if he was burning from the inside. His feet felt as if they were on fire as well, despite the fact that they didn't touch the ground for long. Usually the wind Sonic created by running was used to cool him, now it was as hot as the rest of his surroundings. The blue hedgehog felt that the heat was beginning to get to him. The dazed feeling in his head made it hard to concentrate on the way and Sonic had difficulties to dodge the quickly appearing obstacles in his way.

_Hang on, Sonic_, he thought, _they're all counting on you. It can't be much further. Just a little more… _Sonic was known for never losing his optimism and he was determined not to lose it this time either. He would save the day. He always did.

* * *

Finally, Sonic reached the cave and stopped. He could see the seven Chaos Emeralds lying on the floor only a few steps away from him now. He moved closer, until he stood in the middle of the glowing gems.

The hedgehog closed his eyes in concentration and began to draw on the Emeralds' power. He could feel the warm Chaos Energy begin to float through his entire body. Pain, heat exhaustion and dizziness vanished completely. For a few, short moments, Sonic forgot the threat to the world, his friends and his own life as his fur turned golden, shining in a bright yellowish light and his feet were no longer touching the ground. Sonic could feel a final flash of bright, warm energy rocket though his body, like a huge wave of adrenaline and endorphins. Now completely empowered, he felt like nothing could stop him and opened his eyes with a determined smile on his face.

"Watch out, tough guy, I'm coming for ya!" With these words Super Sonic flew forwards, rushed through the short tunnel that led to the hot centre of the volcano. The hot air in here didn't bother Sonic any longer, in his super form he was nearly invulnerable and could stand the heat without problems.

Super Sonic flew above the boiling lava at full speed, heading directly for the strange monster in front of him. The energy creature seemed to have spotted the approaching hedgehog, it turned around to regard Sonic with eyes bigger than the hedgehog was and they didn't look friendly.

"Sorry for keeping you waitin', pal", Super Sonic shouted at the creature. Instead of an answer the ugly beast blew out a huge blast of fire and burning air smelling like rotten eggs at the hedgehog. Sonic dodged the attack easily and flew higher up in the air.

"Man, you really have to suffer from the worst bad breath I ever heard of!", he grinned, before he charged up and blasted himself at the lava creature at full speed, curling into a spin inches before the impact. The creature yelled aloud and Sonic was bounced back by his own speed and crashed into the next wall of the crater. He pushed himself out of the wall, barely noticing the pain in his back and shook his head.

"Geez, this didn't work so well. Guess I need another strategy and fast. Time is running out. If I don't destroy this thing before the volcano blows up, it will become too powerful to beat and will be unleashed to destroy the world." He dodged another attack moving around the monster in fast circles. "But how can I do more damage to it? Maybe if I …," he stopped his monologue to dive down quickly to avoid another fire breath.

Damn! He was running out of time. How much of the countdown remained? Five minutes maybe? Or less?

The volcano was rumbling loudly and the crater top seemed to begin collapsing by now. "Think, Sonic, think! And fast!"

The creature opened its huge mouth again, a deep hole of hot darkness. Sonic acted through pure instinct and desperation as he charged up and sped directly into this hole. Suddenly he became aware of what he was doing. _I must be completely insane. But if I have to die today, I'm going to take you creep with me!_

Super Sonic raced into the lava beast's body. A few seconds after he had entered it, he stopped from one instant to the next. He slowed down so fast that the forces of this sudden brake sent a wave of hot pain thought his body. Super Sonic gave himself only a second to recover, then he charged up his remaining Chaos Energy to the very least. _This is suicide_, he thought when he opened his arms, blasting the Chaos Energy at the creature surrounding him.

Then the world turned dark.

* * *

The first thing Sonic felt was a pounding, burning and twitching white-hot pain in his entire body. He opened his eyes, but he couldn't see much. His vision was foggy and blurred. The hedgehog shook his head to get clearer, but it didn't really help, so that Sonic closed his eyes again and tried to relax a bit.

But then the memory of what had happened flashed through Sonic's mind, coursing a wave of adrenaline to flood his body that jolted him from groggy drowsiness to fully-awake alarm from one second to another. Sonic shot upwards and his eyes flew open again. Now he could see his environment in a dim light. He was still inside the volcano, the light around came from a river of boiling lava only a few meters away from the rock Sonic was sitting on. Quickly the hedgehog monitored himself, finding his body covered by several bruises and burns.

Carefully Sonic got to his feet. "Better I get outta here now", he mumbled. The movement hurt, but he could run. _I can't have been passed out for long_, he thought, _the volcano hasn't erupted yet_.

Following the river of lava, Sonic entered the huge crater again. The monster was gone, just the crater of bubbling lava remained.

But how had he gotten from here to the cave in which he had came to? What about his friends? He really hoped Knuckles and Tails had gotten to the Tornado in time and were far away from here now.

Then Sonic realized the Chaos Emeralds had vanished. "That's just logical", he said to himself, "I hurt myself with that blast of energy. The Chaos Emeralds were near together in that moment, without anyone or anything to control them. So they scattered themselves away with Chaos Control, like they always do." He grinned. "Lucky for me they sent me out of there too. Chaos Control and the fact that I still was Super Sonic must have saved my life."

Suddenly the ground began to rumble under Sonic's feet, the crater in front of him gulped out bubbles of hot lava and several big rocks fell down from the crater walls. Sonic quickly jumped aside. Only a second later a rock twice a huge as Knuckles' Master Emerald smashed into the ground where the blue hedgehog had been standing instantly. The impact left a deep hole in the ground and pushed Sonic up into the air. "Wow, that was a close one", he shouted." Looks like I really have to get out of this mess or I will be fried hedgehog!"

Sonic took a few steps back, until he was standing on the edge of the crater and could feel the hot steams of air on his back. Then he began to run, leaned forward into the wind shield that build with his speed. To any observer it would have looked as if the blue hedgehog wanted to run into the rocky wall in front of him, but of course it only looked like it. Instead of crashing into it, Sonic ran up the nearly vertical crater wall and leaped right over its top. Then he sped down the volcano's side.

He was only halfway down to the plains that surrounded the fire mountain when the ancient bomb inside it exploded. Sonic heard the bang and only an instant later the shockwave caught the hedgehog's body and lifted it into the air. Sonic was a few seconds off his feet with no contact to the ground, but then the contact came cruelly. The hedgehog was smashed onto solid, hard terrain, being bounced over it, tumbling helplessly and finally hit something. The impact's force crushed his breath out of his lungs and then it was over.

For seconds Sonic was just lying there, face down to the ground, momentarily not able to move. The hedgehog gasped and coughed up some desert sand, every cough sending new waves of pain through his injured body. He rolled over as he slowly got his senses back. His ears were still ringing from the explosion, but he could open his eyes and saw the sky above him glowing in a dark red.

Sonic sat up and carefully examined his hurting body. Several bruises, he was bleeding, but it seemed as if he had been lucky again. No serious injuries at all; no broken bones. Sonic swayingly stood and immediately almost passed out. He hunkered back down, resting his hands on his knees, head down, and waited for the dizziness and nausea to pass. He made another careful attempt at standing when even the ringing in his ears started to fade slowly.

While cautiously testing that every part of him was still where it ought to be, Sonic glanced back at the volcano. The shockwave had carried him a few miles away. From the distance Sonic couls see the volcano erupting, boiling rivers of lava running down its sides and there were some red-hot, glowing stones around him. Pulling his gaze loose, Sonic turned around and ran through the deserted plain, heading for the meeting point with Tails and Knuckles.

* * *

When he reached the place, he first saw the Tornado, then he spotted his friends, relieved noticing they were both completely fine. Sonic slowed down and stopped in front of them.

Tails immediately hugged him, despite the hedgehog being dirty and bloodied. "Sonic, I'm so glad you made it!", the fox shouted.

"Hey kid, you didn't doubt me, did ya? I always make!" Sonic grinned at his foxy friend and gave him a thumbs-up.

"Are you sure you are alright, Sonic?" Knuckles eyed the blue hedgehog slightly worried. "You look dreadful."

"I'm okay, these are only scratches. Don't worry, I'll be fine," Sonic answered.

Knuckles regarded his friend suspiciously, trying to do an on-sight examination on his condition. Sonic's body was covered with bruises, some of his injuries still bleeding and Knuckles knew the hedgehog too long and too well not to notice the pain in his movements and the exhaustion in the expression of his green eyes. But to Knuckles' relief, none of Sonic's injuries seemed to be really dangerous and the echidna didn't doubt his promise he'd be okay. Satisfied about that, Knuckles turned to Tails when the young fox spoke up, looking at Sonic with big eyes.

"Looks like you destroyed the monster, right Sonic?", Tails asked.

"Yeah, I did." Sonic hesitated a moment, then he turned to Knuckles. "I have to apologize to you, Knux."

The echidna's look was completely puzzled. "Huh? Why? You saved us all!"

"But I lost the Emeralds. I – well, I passed out during the fight and they scattered themselves away."_ And saved my life by doing so_, Sonic added silently.

Knuckles just shrugged, as if the whereabouts of his precious Chaos Emeralds was of no importance to him. "It doesn't matter. We'll find them again, we always do. All that matters is that you beat that monster and survived this fight." Knuckles put one of his hands on Sonic's shoulder and pressed it slightly, but quickly pulled away when the hedgehog winced in pain. "Sorry."

"It's okay," Sonic assured him.

Knuckles shot a glance at Tails; the young fox was standing a few footsteps away from the other two and regarded the erupting fire mountain, somehow fascinated by the forces of nature. Knowing that the kid couldn't hear them, Knuckles turned to Sonic and spoke quietly. "You know, Sonic, I was worried that you could lose this time. The chance seemed to be that small, it just couldn't work." He shook his head at the hedgehog. "Screw the stupid Emeralds; I thought I wouldn't see your annoying face again."

Sonic smiled, his eyes sparkling touchedly. "Hey, I always come through, you should know that. Look at Tails; he said he didn't doubt me."

The red echidna nodded. "I don't doubt you either, Sonic." He smiled and Sonic grinned back.

"And don't worry about the Emeralds. We'll find them; we have a lot of practice in hunting down these things after all." Sonic smirked and turned away.

"Sonic?"

"Huh?"

"I think we make a great team."

Sonic grinned broadly again and gave the echidna a casual thumbs-up.

Knuckles had spoken the last sentence louder than the rest of their conversation and Tails turned to his two friends. The fox smiled. "I'm saying that for years now, but the two of you always have to argue. We are all friends, why arguing?" He looked from Sonic to Knuckles and back. "Will you stop all that fighting now?"

The hedgehog and the echidna exchanged a glance. Both of them smiled. "No, it's a lot of fun!", they answered in unison.

Tails rolled his eyes and sighed, but couldn't hide his smile.

All three of them turned around to look at the erupting volcano again. Minutes no one said anything, everybody thinking about what had happened. Then the echidna sighed.

Sonic shot a glance at his red buddy. "You okay Knuckles?"

"I'm fine." The echidna tried to hide the sad undertone in his voice, but Sonic knew him way to good not to notice it. "It's just …. I thought … I hoped I could get some answers there, you know. About what happened to my tribe when they vanished thousands of years ago. These otongas seemed to know. But all I found were even more mysteries and unanswered questions. And now, the whole place blew up and nothing's left to investigate." Knuckles sighed again. "Just another dead end. Maybe I should stop searching for answers, maybe there are none any more…"

Sonic placed his hand on Knuckles' shoulder. "Don't worry that much Knuckles. Just don't lose hope. I bet you'll find out one day."

The echidna turned his face to meet Sonic's eyes. The bright emerald green was smiling at him and a smirk returned on Knuckles face.

"And if anyone can find these answers, you can Knuckles. You're the best there is when it comes to finding ancient stuff," Tails said, grinning at the red echidna.

"And if you need help," Sonic added, "well, you know where to find us."

Knuckles smiled. "Thanks, guys."

"Hey, that's what friends are for Knux!", Sonic smirked.

"And after all, we can be happy," Tails remarked, "We stopped Eggman from conquering the world and that ugly lava beast won't destroy anything now, thanks to Sonic. We won!"

"Right Tails!" Sonic pointed at the biplane. "I think we all deserve a nice dinner now. I'm starving."

Knuckles smirked. "I agree, but only if one thing is clear." He looked at the blue hedgehog.

"Mean what?" Sonic asked, puzzled.

"I demand that there is something to eat for me besides chilli dogs!"

All three of them broke into laughter.

"Okay, Knux, I won't force you to eat any chilli dogs," Sonic grinned. "And you know, if you don't eat them, there are more left for me!"

Sonic jumped into the plane, sitting down in the rear seat.

Tails took the pilot seat and Knuckles jumped up to stand on the plane's wings. Normally that was Sonic's favourite place to ride the Tornado, but at the moment he was happy that he could sit down on something. Sonic wouldn't admit it, but he was that exhausted, he could barely stand. And he knew he didn't have to admit it, he knew from a short glance the echidna had shot at him Knuckles knew how tired he was.

_It __will take about three hours for the Tornado to reach Tails' workshop_, Sonic thought as Tails lifted off and the plane began to climb higher. _Three hours are long_.

Slowly Sonic sank deeper in his seat, allowing the exhaustion of the latest events to get to him and feeling tiredness getting stronger than pain. Stone-like heavy eyelids shut themselves and Sonic was fast asleep only one minute after takeoff.


	8. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

Sonic stood outside Tails' workshop and looked at the Tornado gathering speed and then lifting up in the air. The little fox flew two low circles and Sonic waved at Tails and Knuckles.

Two days had passed since they had returned from the volcano. Two days of well deserved lying low, relaxing and chilling out.

Now Knuckles wanted to return to Angel Island and Tails was taking him there in his plane.

Sonic stood and watched until the small plane was out of sight.

Then he looked over the hills of the mystic ruins.

He smiled as he felt his legs itching, demanding for a run. He wouldn't hold his energy back any longer.

Sonic accelerated that fast that he reached his full speed within 10 seconds.

In the moment he broke the sound barrier, he entered a completely different world. A world of perfect silence. Sonic was moving faster than the speed of sound, so that no sound of his surroundings could reach his ears.

The only thing left to be heard was the rhythm of his own heart beat as a kind of relaxing percussion, slightly meditative.

Sonic felt the cool breeze in his face, inhalated deeply the fresh air of the early morning, and enjoyed his own speed. He felt the memories of the last events fade slowly as he took in the view of the forest he ran through.

The pain of his injuries was almost gone and Sonic the Hedgehog felt ready for a new adventure.

He smiled and turned to the right, following the flow of the warm summer wind. Sonic didn't know were it would lead him, but he had plenty of time to find out.


End file.
